Carleton Comps Project: Northfield Youth Services Participation Tracking and Analysis

Final Results - Keyping Track

Northfield Youth Services Participation Tracking and Analysis

Advisor: Amy Csizmar Dalal

Background

Youth services, especially services for at-risk youth like The Key in Northfield, are a valuable resource to the Northfield community. Not only do they provide places and activities for kids to stay active and engaged, but they are also safe spaces where highly trained staff can form enriching relationships with kids who might not have many adult role models in their lives.

The Key relies on accurate participation tracking to ensure that the work they do adds significant value to the kids and the community. Participation tracking 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 use. This allows them to determine what types of volunteers/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 holistic picture of individual kids: which staff have they interacted with, how many times have they attended, etc. Ideally, this information allows The Key to figure out what other services (housing, mental health) would benefit an individual. In addition, The Key relies heavily on donors, so demonstrating the benefit of The Key’s services is important for continued engagement from donors.

Last year, a Comps group developed a system to facilitate a crucial first step in this vision: moving The Key from a time consuming and messy paper-based participation tracking system to an online participation tracking system and database. The Key uses this online system on a daily basis, and it has helped them out tremendously, saving time and streamlining processes. However, as with any new system, several important issues have surfaced: the system is not as secure as it should be, and data confidentiality is not addressed to the extent it needs to be with this sensitive population; and the interface is not optimized for mobile devices, which is the primary way volunteers interact with the system. In addition, now that a system exists to more easily track participation, The Key can start to answer deeper questions about engagement and resource usage -- something the system can be modified to assist with.

The project

In this project, you will be working with The Key to expand the participation tracking system developed by last year’s Comps group. The focus of this year’s project will be on three specific aspects of the participation tracking system:

Data privacy and system security. Much of the data Key staff deal with is sensitive data --- it’s data about minors, first of all, and some data should be seen by, say, Scott and the counselor on staff but perhaps not by all volunteers. The existing system does not contain enough granularity to assign different "roles" to accounts to show or hide this data on an as-needed basis. The system needs to be redesigned to allow for access control, as well as for easier creation and maintenance of system accounts.
Going mobile. The majority of Key staff access the participation tracking system on their phones, a use case that the original design did not anticipate. In order for the staff to quickly check kids in, the interface needs to be rethought and redesigned so that it works seamlessly and flawlessly on mobile devices.
Expanding the scope. Enabling participation tracking gives The Key some much-needed data to start answering some bigger picture questions, such as: what social circles exist in this population? What other services might an individual kid benefit from? How do kids use the physical space in the building; where are the "hotspots"? Which activities seem to be the most beneficial or the most popular? How can the system facilitate "case management" for individuals?

The project will involve the following stages:

Analyze the existing system, to understand its design and operation and better understand where it currently falls short.
Work with Scott and The Key to develop use cases for the expanded scope of the system, as described above.
Overhaul the existing interface to make it mobile-focused, using an iterative design-prototype-test cycle and performing usability tests early and often.
Overhaul the inner workings of the system to address the security and privacy issues outlined above.
Add and test features based on the use cases.
Present the final system prototype to The Key and its stakeholders.

This is an academic civic engagement (ACE) Comps project. This means that The Key is our client for this project. In addition to all of the other goodness that you will gain by participating in CS Comps, you will also learn to (1) interact with a real-world client in a professional manner, (2) produce a product that will be used by real people in the real world, and (3) improve the lives of at-risk youth in Northfield.

Deliverables

Primary: A modified participation tracking system for The Key, that focuses on secure, efficient, and effective data collection on mobile devices while retaining privacy/confidentiality of client data, as well as capabilities to analyze the data for larger trends.

Secondary: A presentation and release of your product to The Key and its stakeholders, along with any associated documentation/training.

Recommended experience

This project is well suited for students who want to utilize their computer science skills to benefit the Northfield community and who are interested in working closely with clients. CS 344 (Human-Computer Interaction) or CS 100 (Human-Centered Computing) would be nice, but is not required. Similarly, experience working on other ACE projects or with community groups is recommended, but not required.

References/inspiration

One of your first tasks on this project will be to identify appropriate sources and resources to guide the design and development process. This literature review should touch on the following areas:

Data visualization
Human-computer interaction/user-centered design
Social science literature about the participation of at-risk youth in community activities: who chooses to participate, how organizations track and manage participation, etc.

In addition, The Key’s web site (http://unionofyouth.org/) has a lot of good information about The Key and its programs.