Project Overview
Our Comps project was an academic civic engagement (ACE) Comps project. This meant that we worked directly with a client to deliver a software they could use within their organization. Our client was The Key in Northfield and the software we were working on was a Participation Tracking System originally developed by students from the last two iterations of comps projects.
The Key is the longest running youth-run youth-center in the nation which is made possible by The Northfield Union of Youths (NUY)’s Key youth board. They provide a safe environment for at-risk youth to connect with each other, caring adults, and their community, and are an overall amazing non-profit with inspiring volunteers, organizers, and adolescence
The Participation Tracking System allows The Key to measure who is engaging with their services, when they are engaging with these services, how often they are engaging with these services, and which services they are specifically using. The Participation Tracking System allows them to determine what types of volunteers and staff are needed at various times, so that they can advocate for and recruit for these positions. It also allows them to form a more comprehensive picture of individual kids and their needs in order to figure out what services they may benefit from.
Our main goal for this year's project was to iterate on the existing design by fixing any pressing issues that appear, and identifying any changes that could be made to improve the current workflow of the system.
We also needed to expand the scope of the tool. This meant creating an effective way to produce visualizations, feedback, and reports that would better help The Key serve it’s youth and articulate its outcomes to donors and funding agencies.
In order to most effectively do this, we needed to:
- Familiarize ourselves with the codebase and existing documentation
- Conduct on-site observations of how The Key uses this system and identify needs
- Consult with staff at the Key
- Impliment new features based on The Key’s requests and needs
- Update existing documentation for future comps groups
Resources
- Django Models: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/db/models/
- Django Migrations: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/migrations/
- Django Serializers: https://www.django-rest-framework.org/api-guide/serializers/
- NUY Website: https://unionofyouth.org/the-key-youth-center
- Rapid Contextual Design (Holtzblatt et. al)
- RESTful API: https://mlsdev.com/blog/81-a-beginner-s-tutorial-for-understanding-restful-api
