RMHC
I have been a project lead in an outreach program with the Ronald McDonald House Charities, Greater DC chapter for the past couple of years. During this time I oversaw and contributed to the development of a mobile app for the families that stay at the house.
Project Background
Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) is a worldwide organization that helps families struggling with problems like how to stay near and support a hospitalized child, how to afford staying together in another city while a child is undergoing treatment, or even how to get basic medical care in a vulnerable community. The greater DC chapter expressed a need to improve the overall guest experience. In their current experience there are a lot of paper based processes and guests are having difficulties getting the most up to date information or knowing who to contact for issues. In order to help improve the guest experience and streamline the information a Stay mobile app was born. The idea for this app is that it would serve as an information repository to help connect families and support staff at RMHC. Currently the app is still in development, soon to be released.
Design Process
Discovery
For the discovery phase of this project the main focus was to gather as much information about RMHC-DC as possible. In order to do this I participated in meetings and events such as:
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Meeting with executive staff to learn about the house and it's strategic vision
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Taking a tour of the house and current amenities
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Reviewing paper packets given to guests upon arrival
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Talking with overnight house staff about common requests
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Reading and analyzing various information and press releases offered by executive staff
“This is Amazing! It is going to make such a difference for the people in the house”
Dustin (Vice President, Programs and Operations)
Describe
To organize all of the information gathered during the discovery phase I worked as part of a team to map out the current state for guests of the house. The process began very low fidelity using color coded post its to differentiate the steps of a guest's journey, and any pain points that were identified at each step. After identifying the pain points in the current state map the team and I brainstormed focused changes to the house rules and processes to eliminate the pain points and provide a smoother stay. Once the ideas were finalized they were captured in an excel document, then created as a poster to share and get feedback from the house staff.
Design
Although I wasn't involved in the actual design of the wireframes, I decided to get into a different area of the design. I leveraged my database knowledge to map out the data structures for the Stay Mobile App based on the wireframes created. The database design was important because it was the framework and backend of the app. It made sure the information was easily accessible and organized for the developers or house staff making any information updates. Once consensus was reached on the design, I created the structure in the cloud based system that the app is powered by.
Develop
I have been leveraging my development skills by collaborating with the development team to develop features on the Stay mobile app so that families at house have a point of reference available at their fingertips. Part of coding the features required me to learn and new mobile framework called Ionic. Although the app is still in development as project lead I have been able to move progress along by hosting two hackathons so far to ensure progress. Also to keep the client informed and engaged I have set up various touchpoints to demo app functionality.
