Bexar County Fostering Educational Success (BCFES) is a state-funded program with an evidence-based and trauma-informed strategic framework tailored to meet the educational and external needs of youth with foster care history. While Bexar County has a wealth of funding and resources available to these youth, these resources were decentralized among colleges and school districts and were not being taken advantage of.
I learned about BCFES through my personal network and heard they were looking for help with redesigning their Resources web page so they could be considered for additional funding for their pilot program.
I conducted a Heuristic Evaluation of their current web page and discussed specific opportunities for improvement during my first stakeholder meeting.
Major violations of heuristics included User Control and Freedom, Consistency and Standards, and Visibility of System Status.
As a result of my presentation, I received stakeholder approval to join the team as their Sole Product Designer 🎉
After onboarding, I met with stakeholders to narrow down major pain points to address with the web page redesign. Due to a 10 week time constraint, I knew we needed to focus on issues that most affected the functionality of the project - what were the greatest impediments to BCFES being able to serve their audience?
1. As a new pilot program, BCFES had access to a wealth of resources but lacked a system to consolidate, organize, and make those resources accessible to their target demographic.
2. BCFES’s current resource web page consisted of long PDF documents that needed to be downloaded to open. This was not mobile-friendly for any students looking for resources on the go.
With stakeholder approval to move forward with addressing the two main pain points, I expanded my research to subject matter experts and actual users. Through Zoom calls, I met with social work interns, the BCFES project director, and former foster youth - all whom had one-on-one experience working with the targeted population - youth and young adults with a history of foster care.
This research allowed me to come up with a Needs Statement that combined the goals of the organization with the needs of their target demographic.
Foster youth in San Antonio need an easy to use resource guide that doesn’t overwhelm them with information so they can improve their quality of life and become more self-sufficient.
Although we were designing for a hyperlocal demographic, I recognized that the challenge of providing resources to foster youth was a nationwide issue. To save us time and resources, I asked the team “Who else has attempted to assemble a resource guide for foster youth?”
This led to a competitive audit of the following organizations: Kid Save, Know Before You Go, and Thru Project. All three of these organizations had elements that we could draw from to design our own resource map, so I took screenshots of each website, annotated specific design elements, and walked through my notes with the social work interns. We came to a consensus that it was a priority to make sure we categorized our resources in a clear and logical manner.
Resources from the team were compiled and sent to me in a hodgepodge of lists, PDF files, and spreadsheets. I also received resources from various departments from University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas A&M University, Alamo Community Colleges, and various public school districts in Bexar County.
The competitive audit inspired the challenge of aggregating and organizing all the resources in a logical manner, as well as in a way that allowed for a match between the system and the real world.
The project director introduced to me the Seven Life Domains Framework, which I used to categorize resources and create a navigation system. Some domains were altered to be more succinct navigation titles, while still using language that would be familiar to students.
The team reviewed and approved the spreadsheet of organized resources before moving onto site wireframes.
Wireframes for the seven categories were designed, with one separate tab for each category. I presented the wireframes to the team in order for them to view the categories where all the resources would be organized. With their expertise on the needs of foster youth transitioning into adulthood, we were able to assess opportunities for improvements and discussed ways to address them.
1. Missing resources for uninsured youth, financial literacy, mental health, and juvenile delinquency.
2. Will there be information overload for users? Could students easily search for the information they need so we can omit it from the website?
Once wireframes were updated with the team feedback, I began creating design mockups for each category.
With my design mockups for each page of the Resource Map and comprehensive resource spreadsheets, the team began making changes to the website. Since the team members were not experienced into translating design into code, I worked with them along the way to compromise and adjust the design to work in Wix, the platform they used to host their website.
At this time, the team realized that hiring a developer to code a searchable map for the webpage was not feasible given limited time and lack of resources, so we decided to import the most relevant resources with physical locations onto a MapMe widget.
The Resource Map website redesign was virtually showcased at the Educational Success for Professionals and Youth Conference in May 2021. It was positively received by many professionals who regularly work with youth with a history of foster care.
“It’s an amazing resource and I know it will be very helpful to students, staff and the community.” - Student Care Advocate
I worked on this project while BCFES was in their 2-year pilot phase. This project contributed to renewed funding from 87th Texas State Legislature, which will allow for increased outreach to and meaningful engagement with youth with a history of foster care. See here for the press release celebrating this great milestone for BCFES!
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