Philly Truce

Creating a collaborative web app to increase safety & prevent violence at schools

Preventing violence and improving safety at schools

OVERVIEW

Philly Truce, a non-profit dedicated to addressing youth violence in Philadelphia, was in need of a web app to help mitigate conflicts at schools and replace their current manual paper process.

The focus of this phase was to design the Safe Path Monitor experience of the app. These individuals report to incidents and work to resolve situations.

Project Goals

  • Create a tool to track and resolve incidents

  • Define how tips will be reported by community

Team

  • UX/UI Design (me)

  • Research

  • Engineering

  • Product Strategy

Outcomes

  • Prototype created

  • Development in progress

  • V1 solution validated

  • User test plan created

Students need trust. Safe path monitors need timely and accurate reporting.

UNDERSTAND

As a design team, we worked closely with the research team to interview students & safe path monitors to gather insights on the current process, what could be improved, and how we should handle the sensitive topic of violence.

  • • SPMs require basic and timely info when monitoring

  • • Establishing trust with students is key to program

  • • Obstacles to help include social media, instigators, and trauma

  • • Students need to feel those helping situations are trustworthy

  • • Students may hesitate to report if they fear retaliation

KEY FINDINGS
CURRENT PAPER PROCESS

Key takeaway: The current process lacks wholistic reporting and hinders effective & timely deployment of personnel. SPMs need a quicker way to get visibility into incidents that might or already occured.

Proposed Solution

  • Student Texting

    Utilize anonymous reporting to avoid “snitching” risk. Leverage automatic chat responses to gather necessary information and option to connect with human (Safe Path Monitor).

  • Incident Reports

    Build incident management reporting to allow SPMs and Admins to respond to and track progress on an incident with notes, assignments, details & priority levels.

  • Dashboard

    Create a user-friendly dashboard that will showcase high level performance and trends for incident reports. Incorporate school and individual SPM views.

  • Notifications

    After an incident is reported, a notification system should send an alert to key school personnel within a certain proximity to the incident.

Alleviating stressful environments requires an organized experience

DEFINE

Taking into consideration research findings and requirements - the design team then set to define the site map for the Safe Path Monitor app to define what would be included in this first launch.

site map evolution

Key takeaways

  • The dashboard “home” should serve updates and analytics

  • Reports will include all incoming, in progress & closed incidents

  • Tip messaging will be accessible within each incident as well as collectively

The challenge of balancing anonymity and collecting detailed information

IDEATE

One of the main challenges was defining how individuals would send in tips for help while maintaining anonymity. We worked with the core team to map out tip reporting and incident report tracking.

submitting a TIP
INCIDENT REPORTING FLOWS

Key takeaways

  • Students & community members will text their tip to 1-800-PHILLY-TRUCE (instead of a downloadable app to maintain anonymity)

  • SMS tips will be sent directly to SPM app with all included details and option to message if needed

  • SPM app users will receive notifications for any new tips to encourage timely action

Building the main components for tracking and claiming reports

WIREFRAMES

With our foundation set, we then focused on ensuring there was a streamlined connection from initial text tip to a safe path monitor reviewing, claiming & responding to the tip.

PROTOTYPE

Bringing it all together to ensure a complete flow from tip to resolution

Our design team then transferred our lo fi wireframes into an interactive prototype that we used to present to the core team and founders to validate direction. During this time, we iterated based on feedback, but formal usability testing will start fall 2024 for further validation.

LOG IN

  • 2 Factor Auth for security

  • Clock In / Clock Out

  • District announcements for large events & closings

  • Daily log to help with SPM shift transitions

claim REPORTs / message

  • Reports (submitted tips) default as “unclaimed”

  • SPM claim reports so other SPMs know incident is being addressed

  • Claiming a report moves it to in progress

  • Once claimed, SPM can edit details & message student

CREATE REPORT

  • Allow SPM to create new reports

  • Utilize drop downs to make the reporting process faster

  • Student details can be included (if given consent)

  • Review & editing capabilities

VIEW ANALYTICS

  • Analytics: # of incidents, time resolved by incident, average resolution time

  • Admin vs SPM view: Admins can see all reports across their district vs. SPMs can only see their claimed reports

MANAGE ACCOUNT

  • Users can manage account details: name, number & email

  • Shortcuts for helpful resources & contacts

Designing for sensitive issues & real-world impact

CONCLUSION

Helping kids stay safe at schools, especially with gun violence on the rise, has been a rewarding challenge. As I learn more about the space and Philly Truce program, I’m even more dedicated to making a difference through this app. Our next phase for the project will start Fall 2024 with continued development and testing.

Challenges

  • School and program limitations

  • Deciding on web vs. native mobile app

Learnings

  • Providing feedback without prescribing a solution

  • Encouraging ideation within bounds of constraints

Looking Ahead

  • Development continues

  • Perform usability testing

  • Introduce new admin app