School on Wheels x Web App Design

School on Wheels is a nonprofit that connects volunteer tutors with school-aged children and teens facing homelessness in California. They approached us looking to replace their Google Sheet with a dashboard that communicated with Salesforce and their assessment software, Renaissance.
labeled with "School on Wheels'" logo on the top left. A macbook pro showcasing three different examples of the web application, coming out of the laptop's screen
General Info
Client
School on Wheels
Time-frame
3 Weeks
Deliverable
Web application
services
web app design
stakeholders
two Senior Program development Specialists
About
The Problem
Our contacts at School on Wheels came to us wanting to create a dashboard. At the time, they were using a Google Sheet to store the data between Salesforce and an assessment software called Renaissance. With the dashboard I created, notes can be left on each student based on tutor notes and assessment data can be seen - all in one place.
a screenshot of their overwhelming google sheet.
As they’re a nonprofit, there was a fairly small budget. Knowing that I wouldn’t have a lot of time on this project (3 weeks), I utilized the Tailwind UI Kit. There are about 3-4 users for this specific web app, so we were able to directly ask the users what they needed (ie. what is the most important data that needed to be visible, etc.).

We had a soft launch halfway through the project (after 1 week) where they tested the functionality, requested things be added. We iterated by adding the requested items, removed things that were out of scope, and showed them again, etc.
The Solution
Actions Taken
Dashboard - Version 1
We had a list of requirements directly from the stakeholders/users (remember: in this case, they're the same people). The requirements were as follows:
• Accordion for records (Notes field, see assessments button)
• High level data (match ID, student name, tutor name, tutor email, grade)
• Filters (text, assessment type, date range)
• Search button
• Edit record button / icon
• Export as CVS button
• Sync to Salesforce button
• Showing assessment type
• Alert for Salesforce Match ID not entered
• Alert icon for records not synced to Salesforce
• Pagination
• View records selection (25, 50, 100)
Dashboard - Version 2
After showing the client the prototype and completing our own testing internally, we sent the client a beta version to test out the functionality & feel. Once they spent about a week with it, they had additional requests. Also, due to the cost, we needed to make further changes to bring the cost down until the clients were able to secure more funding for further updates. The changes we made were:‍
• Reduce MATCH ID cell to display only the last three characters of the ID
• Replace TUTOR EMAIL with STATUS
• Change DATE UPDATE to UPDATE SENT
• Add LAST TEST next to the UPDATE SENT column
• Add TYPE to show which program the student is enrolled in
• Remove the functionality of clicking on the row and instead add an ACTION column to allow users to: update note, change status, view assessments
• Remove USERS from top navigation
Student Assessment View
Initially, we only had the accordion view. The reason for this was to keep the consistently with the original requirement of the dashboard screen "Accordion for records." However, the dev costs and loading times for so many records on a page us to remove the functionality on the dashboard.

We kept the accordion view on the student's assessment page, But with the users being more familiar with the Google Sheet, it was requested that we add an option to allow them to view the student's assessments in a list view. This allows them to easily compare assessment scores and progress.

The biggest challenge with this portion of the design was translating the accordion view of the assessment scores into a dashboard that you could view at a glance. Luckily, the users already are familiar with abbreviations of the assessments. Using these abbreviations for the column titles allowed me to increase legibility through spacing.
The Conclusion
Outcomes
This was an ongoing project with plans for future updates. For example, we will be adding back in the "User" tab where an admin can manage users by adding new user and editing/deleting existing users. We had an ever-growing list of other updates as well.

However, this was a project I worked on while employed at AKOS, a wonderful software firm. I took another opportunity before School on Wheels received their next round of funding, so this is where my journey ended with School on Wheels.

That said, I was truly thrilled to be working on such a meaningful project.