Child Welfare Investigator

Tablet app to target and improve a child welfare investigators needs while visiting families and children away from the office. The app saves time and allows the user to focus on their cases and children’s welfare rather than being lost in paper work. It gives the investigator the right information at the right time. This also improves accuracy and lets the user perform tasks more efficiently. At the research phase of the project we come up with three statements to help focus on our users needs.

An investigator is guided on what they need to do during a case visit so they can gather the right information to help them decide the best outcome for the child, whilst still always keeping their focus on the family.

An investigator is able to familiarize & prepare for a specific investigation so that they are armed with the relevant information.

An investigator is able to manage & organise their investigation visits based on different factors, while on the go.

Using Design Thinking to funnel complex problems into simple solutions

We used design thinking to simplify the complex workflow of the investigators and help keep us focused on the users needs. Much of a child welfare investigators work is heavily regulated. This translates into doing huge amount of admin and documentation work on each case. They usually will have fill in several types of assessments which is mostly done on paper and sometimes laptops. By simplifying the assessment forms into easy to fill in sections on tablets the users found that they could spend more time face to face with families.