Sixty-eight questions that map a whole system

Web app

A researcher at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health maps the systems that are supposed to help people, in this case the child support system as it works for survivors of domestic violence. The map has 68 parts across six sections.

A map that size usually arrives as a workshop and a spreadsheet. This turns it into a fifteen-minute assessment anyone in that system can take, and gives them back a report they can act on the same day. Turning a workshop into something self-serve recurs across the university work.

Book a 25-minute call

RoleDesign and build

The map68 parts, six sections

StatusIn build, shown as designed

Two ways in

By section, or follow a case

A state administrator thinks in departments. A caseworker thinks in what happens to a family, in order. Both get the same 68 parts, arranged the way they already hold them in their head, so neither has to translate before they can answer.

Two screens of the assessment on a pale background: the choice of working through the map by section or by case stage, and behind it the group view showing how a community answered

The whole path

What you're in for, before you start

Six sections, how many parts are in each, and how long each takes. Nobody abandons something halfway as often when they could see the whole of it at the start, and the counts fill in as they go so the end stays in sight.

The roadmap listing six sections from Policies to Mindsets, each with its number of items and minutes, beside a ring showing progress

Sixty-eight parts

The map fills in as you rate it

Every part you rate lights its own segment: green where it works, yellow where it is being worked on, red where it is not, gray where you do not know. The counter climbs, the ring closes, and somebody fifteen minutes in can see what they have built rather than a progress bar telling them about it.

The assessment home screen: a ring of sixty-eight segments fills in one at a time, green, yellow, red and gray, the counter climbing to 68 of 68, then a check mark lands in the middle

Who's asking

Your role decides what you're asked

Jurists, caseworkers, legal representation and advocates see the same system from different seats. A few questions up front mean somebody can answer only the parts they actually touch, and the tribal nation and county fields are there because this system is run county by county.

The About you screen with role chips, a state and county picker, a tribal nation option and an email field, beside a panel explaining why each is asked

Rank, don't rate

A second pass that asks what matters most

Rating sixty-eight things produces sixty-eight opinions and no decision. So a second pass takes only the parts somebody marked as still needing progress and asks for three of them, in order. Choosing is less work than scoring, and what comes out is a section's top three, not a spreadsheet nobody opens.

The second pass for Policies, two of three top slots filled with controls to reorder and remove them, beside a Going well column whose cards cannot be picked and a Working to improve column where the two not yet taken carry an add to top three button

The give-back

A report that belongs to whoever answered

Most assessments take somebody's answers and send back a thank you. This one closes the loop on the screen: the ring filled in, each of the six sections counted by how its parts were rated, and the priorities listed by name. Nothing is locked, so opening a row and changing an answer rewrites the report under it. The answers in this picture were filled in to show the screen; no community has answered yet.

The results screen, a ring of sixty-eight rated segments reading 68 of 68 beside the six sections each counted by rating, above a numbered list of top priorities

Together

Where a community agrees, and where it splits

Once more than three people from one community have answered, the group view opens: each part of the map with how everyone rated it, and the places where the court and the caseworkers see it differently. Those splits are the agenda for the next meeting. No single person's answers are ever shown. The nine responses in this picture are the prototype's own sample data; no community has answered yet.

The group view: bars showing how nine people rated retention of skilled workers, survivor-centered training and safe visitation, then a callout naming the one split worth looking at

Under the hood

Built for the maps that come after it

Every screen renders from a content file, with no questions hard-coded, so the researcher's other system maps can run through the same assessment without another build.

Nobody's answers stand alone

A response joins a group view only if its author opts in, and the group view stays locked until more than three people have answered, so nobody can be picked out of a small team.

Fifteen minutes, in as many sittings as you like

Progress is saved as it goes, with a resume banner and a deliberate two-step start-again, so a day's interruptions don't cost somebody their answers.

Reachable without a mouse, and still if you ask

The ranking reorders from the keyboard as well as by dragging, every control carries a real name, and nothing on the screen moves for a visitor whose system asks for reduced motion. A tool for public health staff gets opened on whatever the office issued, by whoever was asked to fill it in.

Four answers, and one of them is “don’t know”

Going well, working to improve, needs work, don’t know. No five-point scale, and no obligation to guess: on a map this wide, which parts somebody cannot speak to is a finding in itself, and forcing a number there would bury it.