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Housing Assistance Dashboard

Promoting data entry for change on the ground

***Note that all information that could be used to identify our client has been obscured as per the terms of the NDA for this project. The actual names of the data dashboard and the organization are not given, but will henceforth be referred to as "Synergistic Optimization" and Cypress Housing, respectively.***

Problem:  Our client, the Evaluation and Compliance manager of a Michigan housing assistance organization, reports to public stakeholders for funding. However, the client does not have sufficient information to report, as many of the organization members fail to record their progress in the organization's internal Google Sheets-based data dashboard.

Goal: Propose a solution to increase participation in the organization’s dashboard.

Solution Overview:  Our team proposed several design recommendations to make the dashboard more accessible to individuals who are less comfortable with working with data. We also proposed several changes to the organization to assist organization members to onboard and find value in the dashboard.

Project Duration: 4 Months

Team: 3 members (All team members equally contributed to all parts of this project)

Tools: Figma

Process

Interviews

We interviewed individuals from several different positions in Cypress housing, including the Evaluation and Compliance Manager, team leads, members of the Performance Quality Indicator (PQI) committee, and the Human Services Director. We interviewed 6 total members. Interview questions were written to elicit information from Cypress members about the current role of the dashboard in their work, their challenges and successes in using the dashboard, and what they think could be improved about the dashboard. The interview was semi-structured- follow up questions were asked to gain additional insight into participants' responses to the pre-written questions. Notes and video/audio recordings were also taken during the interviews.

We conducted interviews to explore what challenges the users faced in using the dashboard

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Interpretation

After each interview, interpretation sessions were held, in which all members of our team watched the videos from the interviews and recorded notes about anything that the note taker missed. Once all the notes were taken, we created an affinity wall. All of the individual facts from the notes were transcribed onto sticky notes. Sticky notes were organized into groups of overarching themes. These groups were organized into broader groups, representing higher-level themes. Three levels of themes were created in this manner.

The affinity wall

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Following are the key themes that we discovered:

  • Poor data visualization undermines the effectiveness of the dashboard

  • Cypress uses different methods to input its data into the dashboard

  • Cypress’s ability to effectively manage data depends on senior leadership’s willingness to support organized data management

  • Cypress’s organizational culture values the sharing of information. However, it promotes limited accountability for doing so

  • The overall comfort level of a team lead in managing data improves their ability to use the dashboard effectively

  • Team leads who are uncomfortable with data do not fully understand the usefulness of data gathering or how to use the dashboard in a way that is beneficial to their department

 

The broad issue is that the Evaluation and Compliance Manager is not getting all of the data that they need, due to the reluctance of the data-uncomfortable team leads to fill out the dashboard, which hinders reporting to public stakeholders.

Recomendations

Dashboard Structure

  • Provide departments with access to sub dashboard templates that follow a format that is consistent with that of the main dashboard

  • Display sub dashboards of individual departments as separate tabs in the main dashboard

  • Include filters in the main dashboard to display the metrics that users are interested in. Filters work via Google Sheets formulas and display logic

  • Sections in the main dashboard should auto-populate when their corresponding sections in the sub dashboards are filled out

  • Include dividers in the main dashboard so it is easier to see which metrics belong to which department

  • Include links from the main dashboard to the subdashboards

Team leads could use subdashboards that autopopulate their data onto the relevant parts of the main dashboard

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Organizational Changes

  • A weekly “Metric of the week” event, in which an especially motivational or interesting metric from the dashboard is mentioned in an email blast

  • Dashboard workshops for training staff to efficiently use the dashboard to benefit their departmental activities

  • Have a metric filling day in which the team leads input their information into the dashboard at the same time

  • A buddy system in which data-comfortable team leads support data-uncomfortable team leads in their responsibilities to enter data into the dashboard

The Evaluation and Compliance Manager could implement the buddy system through support from the Property Management and Services Directors

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Next Steps

To ensure project sustainability, we delivered a detailed report and presentation about our research and recommendations to our client. Our client committed to implementing the recommendations that they believed to be useful. They were indeed, impressed by our recommendations and showed us that they had already begun implementation. The client also informed us that the report and the slide deck from the presentation would be useful artifacts for convincing their colleagues to support the changes.

Click here to see the final report

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