CSY-003. A visual that tracks the effectiveness of an intervention program for at-risk youth.

PROJECT COMPLETED: March 2019

SAYA Mentorship Program Attendance Tracker | Data Visualization by David White

THE STORY OF THIS PROJECT

STAKEHOLDER’S PROBLEM: “We need a simple way to monitor the effectiveness of our intervention program.”

South Asian Youth Action (SAYA) is a 501(c)3 youth development organization based in Queens, NY. SAYA’s mission is to foster a strong sense of belonging in youth and provide them with tools to thrive academically, professionally and personally. It currently serves more than 1,500 kindergarten through college-aged youths throughout the City of New York.

As part of NYC’s Community Schools Initiative, SAYA partnered with Richmond Hill High School to operate a mentorship program designed to target at-risk students to improve their school attendance and prevent dropouts. Each week, SAYA’s program administrators and the school’s staff members who were serving as mentors, met to review student data and collaborate on ways they could better support the students enrolled in the mentorship program.

When I began attending the weekly meetings, I saw that each week, mentors were being presented with a large amount of data delivered in a spreadsheet format. The data was very dense and difficult to read. From looking at the spreadsheet, it was very difficult for the mentors to discern exactly what the data was saying about their mentees. Also, since the data was granular (line-by-line) and not summarized, it was very difficult to compare the mentees to the overall student body or to examine subgroups of students within the mentorship program. To solve these problems, I designed and built a visualization, that was updated each week, that showed at a glance the current status and the weekly progress of the students in the SAYA intervention program.

Work Process:

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

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Case Study 003. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Attendance Tracker: Step 1
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)

Step 1 - Discovery

To begin the process of creating the visualization, I met with the administrators of the intervention program and the mentors who worked directly with the students. I listened to the concerns they had and we talked about the challenges they were facing. I began to form an idea of what information needed to be included in the visualization and what raw data needed to be gathered.

CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
Case Study 003. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Attendance Tracker: Step 2
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)

Step 2 - Sketch

Next, I made a rough sketch of what the visualization would look like and what information would go where on the screen.

CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!)
Case Study 003. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Attendance Tracker: Step 3
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel

Step 3 - Prep Data

Since this was a visualization that would have to be updated on a weekly basis, I made sure to organize the data files in such a way that they could be updated quickly. I had to ensure that all of the columns for each category of data would line up exactly, every time. Also, since this would be a change-over-time visualization, it was important to make sure that the format for the date was exactly the same for every row of data. (In this case, I used “MM-DD-YYYY” format.)

CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Microsoft Excel
Case Study 003. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Attendance Tracker: Step 4
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Step 4 - Build

I built out the visualization using Tableau software. The final result would be projected on a large screen during the weekly meetings and I felt that Tableau was the the best choice for that type of presentation.

CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
Case Study 003. South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!) Attendance Tracker: Step 5
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau
CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Step 5 - Publish

I published the finished visualization to Tableau online and I shared it with program administrators via secure link. At the weekly meetings, the visualization was projected on a large screen located at the front of the room. The visualization provided a common point of reference for the team and it was used to frame the conversations they were having about their shared work.

CSY-003, South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), Tableau

Final Results:

 
case studies, data visualizationDavid WhiteSouth Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), change-over-time, line graph, Tableau, data graphic

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)