Neighborhood House

The Neighborhood House attendance project came about after spending the day volunteering with home visitors from Neighborhood House. As part of an early childhood education program, home visitors visit children under their care twice a week to read and play. The goals of the program include increasing language and literacy skills, enhancing social-emotional development and strengthening the parent-child relationship.

As part of this program, each home visitor records the visit with the child, and this is where the opportunity arose. The home visitors were challenged to use a spreadsheet to record visits for more than a single dimension (not only if a visit happened, but which lesson was covered, missed visits with reasons and contact, special requests by the parents, etc.). With 20 home visitors each visiting 12 children, it became quickly apparent that tracking and reporting was an issue for the organization as a whole.

This project created a database backend for simplified reporting (including grant submissions), while making a simplified user interface available for the home visitors. No more synchronizing spreadsheets every day.

Role

I came up with the initial idea of offering this solution to Neighborhood House, and I partnered with a designer and developer to make their requirements into a reality. I proposed the admin UX and acted as both project manager and tester during its development.

Success Metrics

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to continue working on the Neighborhood House attendance tool.