IDENTITY: Enabling medical and legal institutions to access key information about foster children
Goal
To create an online tool for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (CCHMC) CHECK to share key information about children in foster care with Hamilton County Jobs and Family Services (HJFS).
Background
Social services at JFS and medical and other professionals at CCHMC constantly exchange medical and legal information about foster care kids. Up until this point, this had been done via mail and long paperwork processes which had an adverse effect on the quality and relevance of the data, having even a larger impact on the foster children’s health and wellbeing.
Timeline
May - August 2017
Live Well Collaborative Team
Blake Lane, Graduate Research Fellow
Allison Rednour Post-graduate Research Fellow
Adriana Navarro Sainz Graduate Research Fellow
Jen Hill Graphic Design Summer Co-op
CCHMC Principal Investigators
Discovery
Current system
Employing participatory methods, we mapped out the current system along with the CCHMC and HCSJFS team.
Goal System
Based on shared analysis, the goal system was mapped for us to use it as a guide along the research and design process.
Co-Creation Activities
In order to understand the needs of both group of users:
HCJFS (social workers and administrative personnel, IT department)
CCHMC (medical doctors, nurses, social workers, researchers, IT department)
The first interactions focused on learning about their daily activities, schedules, tools they used at work, environments they work at, people/departments they interact with, and the kind of data they most need to access to.
Identify
Who are we designing for?
Initial user research helped us identified the user profiles displayed below.
Content and Information Hierarchy
18 participants from HCJFS and CCHMC who represented our personas partook in a card sort activity. Participants were asked to arrange and prioritize the content for the website.
Design
The insights gathered from various research activities (card sorting, observational research and interviews) along with secondary research, helped us design the structure of the portal.
Wireframing and Testing
Medium fidelity wireframes were initially created to get feedback from users. We relied on paper wire-framing and held in-person sessions to go over features and workflows.
Usability Testing
After refining the wireframes and developing a high-fidelity version, we conducted cognitive walkthroughs with users from both organizations. The interactive prototype was tested with 15 users from both organizations.
Final Prototype
Based on the data drawn from user testing, the prototype was refined to ensure users’ mental models matched the system, hence, to provide a great user experience. The portal was launched in 2018 as a pilot project in Hamilton County. As of 2020, it has been expanded across the state of Ohio. Future plans include to expand nationwide.