Performing Arts Union — Digital Transformation & AI Integration
A national union representing performing arts professionals had outgrown its digital infrastructure. Its website no longer reflected the organization, its member portal frustrated the people it was supposed to serve, and internal processes consumed staff time that should have gone toward member relationships.
Highdive began with the people. Rapid CX/UX interviews with members across segments produced two detailed personas and current-state journey maps that showed exactly where members were hitting walls: finding contract information, accessing pension and health resources, navigating a portal that assumed familiarity the members didn’t have. The opportunity list that came out of that research was tagged by effort and impact so the organization could sequence the work rather than boil the ocean.
The website assessment mapped heuristic findings and analytics directly against the journey stages — so every gap had a human context, not just a traffic number. That became the basis for a phased remediation plan covering information architecture, content, design, and integration priorities.
A new design system and page templates brought visual consistency and ADA compliance to a site that had neither. WordPress development delivered reusable components and a content infrastructure the staff could actually maintain. The member portal integration required careful UX work around single sign-on, gated content, and graceful fallback states for members with varying levels of access.
The automation work is where the AI layer came in. A DocuSign pilot streamlined contract routing for one of the union’s most time-consuming manual processes. An FAQ assistant built on a curated knowledge base handles repeat questions that were consuming staff time — with a human handoff path for anything outside its scope. A board portal and employer-facing hub gave two distinct stakeholder groups structured, role-appropriate access without creating parallel systems of record.
Content operations work ensured nothing decayed after launch: a 90-day calendar with owners, a lightweight editorial workflow, and an SEO plan that included AI-assisted content briefs and schema starters built the habits the organization needed to keep the site working over time.
CX listening devices — on-site surveys, feedback patterns, inbox tagging — closed the loop, giving the team a way to hear from members continuously rather than waiting for the next formal research engagement.
The result is an organization whose digital presence matches its stature, whose staff spend time on member relationships instead of workarounds, and whose members can find what they need without calling anyone.