CSY-001. An online data dashboard for a nonprofit board of trustees.

PROJECT COMPLETED: February 2017

Global Community Charter School Dashboard | Dashboard by David White

THE STORY OF THIS PROJECT

STAKEHOLDER’S PROBLEM: “We need an easy way to monitor progress and ensure accountability within our organization.”

Global Community Charter School (GCCS) is a tuition-free, independent charter school located in New York City. It serves 400 children in Kindergarten through Grade 5. GCCS is committed to inclusiveness and serving all children in its community (Harlem and Washington Heights). The school employs a rigorous, inquiry-based model of education and it has been authorized by International Baccalaureate to offer the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP).

In accordance with state law, GCCS is governed by a Board of Trustees that oversees the school’s operations to ensure fidelity to its educational mission, fiscal responsibility and compliance with all city, state and federal regulations. In order to accomplish this, the Board must review large volumes of data on a regular basis. To complicate matters, the Board of Trustees’ offices are not located inside the school building itself but rather Board members work off-site in different locations, in some cases, internationally. In order to monitor the school and ensure accountability, the Board of Trustees was in need of a consolidated, up-to-date, reliable and easy-to-use source of data that summarized the state of the school at a glance. To solve this problem, I designed and built an interactive online data dashboard for GCCS.

Work Process:

Here’s the design process I used to complete this project—

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Case Study 001. GCCS Dashboard: Step 1
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School

Step 1 - Discovery

To begin the process of creating the dashboard, I met with members of the board and with school leaders. I listened to the concerns they had and the challenges they were facing. I began to form an idea of what information needed to be included in the dashboard and what raw data needed to be gathered.

CSY-001, Global Community Charter School
Case Study 001. GCCS Dashboard: Step 2
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School

Step 2 - Sketch

Given the volume of information involved, I felt it was essential to design a display that was clear and easy to read. My strategy here was twofold: 1. Provide a high level overview of each of the main areas of the organization and 2. In each of those areas, provide users with the option to “drill down” to view more detailed information on a topic that is of particular interest to them.

CSY-001, Global Community Charter School
Case Study 001. GCCS Dashboard: Step 3
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Microsoft Excel
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Microsoft Excel

Step 3 - Prep Data

This step was the heavy lift in this project. To complete it, I took the following actions:

  • I identified exactly what data needed to be displayed.

  • I identified sources for each of those data points.

  • I exported that data from school information systems (or requested a data export from an outside source).

  • I cleaned up and organized the data exports.

  • I compiled the data into Tableau-ready csv data files.

CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Microsoft Excel
Case Study 001. GCCS Dashboard: Step 4
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau

Step 4 - Build

Now we come to the fun part—taking dry, lifeless data files and turning them into vibrant, engaging data visualizations. For this organization’s needs, I felt that Tableau was the best tool for the job.

CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau
Case Study 001. GCCS Dashboard: Step 5
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau
CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau

Step 5 - Publish

I published the dashboard online using Tableau. Board members and school leaders could access their new dashboard on any computer or mobile device from anywhere in the world. Once the dashboard was in use, I noticed a big change in the way Board meetings were conducted—rather than using the meetings to gather information as they had before, now, since they had up-to-data information constantly available to them through the dashboard, every member arrived at the meeting already conversant in the data. The meetings went from an exercise in simply finding out what’s happening and turned into a forum to discuss why things are happening. Thanks to the dashboard, Board meetings were now more directly focused on finding solutions.

CSY-001, Global Community Charter School, Tableau

Final Results:

 
case studies, data visualizationDavid WhiteGlobal Community Charter School, dashboard, Tableau

3. Work Samples - Content | Work samples of data visualizations, data dashboards, websites, infographics, publication-quality reports, slide decks and visual presentations I've created (detailed)