CASE MANAGEMENT USABILITY
Usability in child welfare digital tools means stronger and safer families.
THE PROBLEM
The child welfare field relies on case documentation and tracking but overall does not have the capacity or funding to explore enhanced digital tools. For this study, I conducted usability testing on a child welfare nonprofit's online case management and tracking system to ensure that user needs were being met and that product stakeholders were satisfied with the data tracking tools.
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This client was upgrading their current case management portal with detailed data tracking, automation, and drillable report generation. My job was to examine the overall usability of the new site, focusing on the new features being rolled out. A primary challenge for this project was the timeline: product development had already exceeded the original budget many times over, so the recommendations I made had to be simple and cost-effective.
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While conducting standard usability testing on the product, I also analyzed users' overall views on technology and their tendency toward anxiety with new tech tools.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Study & methodology design, recruitment, usability testing and analysis took 6 weeks.
KEY GOAL
Identify priority design changes before product launch.
MY ROLE
I was the full lead on all study components. I guided the product design team through UX and usability research best practices, decided methodologies, developed a study timeline, and moderated usability sessions while two team members observed. I analyzed findings and made prioritized, iterative recommendations.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
The typical social services worker does not have advanced technological work tools available on a daily basis. This had to be factored in from a heuristic analysis perspective without focusing too much on every change requested in user feedback.
One consistent insight provided by all users was excitement at the possibility of this new tool. Given the high volume of cases and families that each user must manage, they were all most excited at the time they would be saving by not having to manually fill out case paperwork.
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SOME PRIMARY FINDINGS
Usefulness is key.
It may seem obvious, but a key finding was that users were willing to overlook clunky or non-intuitive design as long as a new feature was useful. Because for social workers, useful means less paperwork and more time to devote to families in need.
Age is relative.
With this small group of users, we had a fairly large age range. We found similar preferences and trends across these ages, and even that some younger users were anxious about the platform changes being rolled out.
Small tweaks matter.
Because the product team had limited time and funding, a major aim was to prioritize design change recommendations. One small change, identified by all users, was a simple copy edit for a commonly used tab.
PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS
​For each design change recommendation, I included standard justification based on insights from usability testing. Due to the tight project budget and fast turnaround, I also included a severity ranking and ad hoc or layerable options for the product team to take to developers.
COPY CHANGE
All users showed confusion about the wording of one tab, which was to be widely used in actual use. Since the client needed inexpensive, simple design changes, this was a no-brainer to include. I also included scaleable changes should they have available funding for future redesign.
CLICK CLARITY
Many users had issues distinguishing hyperlinked page components. Given the simple solution, I included this as a recommended priority change to increase clarity and decrease user frustration and confusion.
SYSTEM ERRORS
Throughout usability testing, unexpected system errors occurred. For the product team, I outlined these errors, broken down by severity, and included recommendations for further testing.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
The usability testing provided a remarkable amount of insight about the organic use of a new digital tool.
Overall, the new system was well-received, and users were forgiving of minor inconveniences, especially given the utility and flow of the product. Utility and usefulness were qualitatively revealed throughout testing sessions to be main motivators of excitement in the subjects. These findings support current workplace technology acceptance theories about usefulness driving technology use and adoption.
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All participants were excited about the overall changes in the Portal. They expressed excitement at the expanded functionality, particularly how this will ease the current burdens of their job (brought on by existing issues with the Portal as well as standard job tasks such as reporting with no automated system).
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Given the practical findings of this study, the client has included my results in a grant application for technology expansion. This means an extended opportunity to continue monitoring user feedback, implement further design changes, and conduct further research on the impacts of user experience and usability on client engagement and ultimately the improvement of program delivery.
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