Touretteshero is a Community Interest Company (CIC) that help people with Tourettes and other disabilities. They work to organise a variety of live events to celebrate the humour and creativity of Tourettes.
Touretteshero is a place to celebrate the humour & creativity of Tourettes. It’s not about mocking or commiserating – it’s about reclaiming the most frequently misunderstood syndrome on the planet
These events and activities are funded by various organisations and supporters via Touretteshero. The events are varied in activity, are sometimes a one off or can run across multiple dates, locations and venues, catering to diverse audiences. Touretteshero are often required to provide event and activity attendee data back to their funders and use this data to justify and support future funding applications.
The core objective of this project was to enable Touretteshero to collect event and monitoring data so they could create required reports effectively and efficiently. We spent time to understand why this was needed, how they were carrying out their operations and what actions or systems we could implement to overcome their pain points. We identified the following high-level issues with their current operation.
By providing an interface to collect and aggregate the required data in a central portal, we would enable Touretteshero to quickly and easily access and report on the data. This would significantly reduce the duplication of data, human error, and provide accurate reporting crucially need for their funding applications.
The primary goal for this project was to build a system that allows users to record Touretteshero’s event activities data and provides an interface to report on it. A web portal provides a perfect option for a centralised interface where data can be logged and accessed by any device in a web browser.
After a consultation with the client to understand their operations and the data they would need to collect, we engineered a system which met their requirements. The system structure had 4 main components:
We chose a content management system (CMS) that allowed us to deliver on the requirements outlined in our initial consultations with the client. The CMS solution gives the required flexibility and many of the features are already built in., which gave us a head start in the development stage of the project. This approach offered a robust platform that could grow with the business’s future requirements whilst keeping this part of the project on budget.
We worked closely with the client to understand their operations and how they collected and recorded data. We devised a portal structure that made intuitive sense with minimal initial training. To that end it was vital that we used the same vocabulary as them for their data types. The portal was structured with “Projects” as the top-level component within which “activities” are created. Activities contain most of the the required recording data for their operations and allow for multiple activities to be recorded per project.
Surveys are created at a project level and then assigned to individual or multiple activities within the project. This structure gave flexibility in the way they collected data and reported on different projects for different funding suppliers.
The data to create reports needed exporting into a standard file format for analysis. This allowed Touretteshero to utilise the data to create visual charts, aggregate data for management reports and provide evidence to hypotheses.
Creating and distributing surveys allows the Touretteshero team to obtain feedback and monitoring data on their attendees and the events. This information may consist of demographic, geographic, interaction, and behavioural information that may be required by their funding partners.
The surveys can be created with a variety of different question types to give as much flexibility as possible. Due to the often-neurodivergent audiences, the surveys included question types to make them as accessible as possible. This included text, audio and video questions.
Standard survey input fields such as pre-populated dropdown menus, checklists, or “likert” scales made up the survey builder. There are also options for numbers and free text fields which give the flexibility to collect as many different types of data as possible.
When the surveys have been created and published, they can be shared by generating a URL with an accompanying QR code. This is necessary so that the surveys collect answers relating to a specific activity within a project, rather than simply limiting them to a project.
Due to the nature in which Touretteshero’s projects are funded, they need to record information about their projects and activities to which they provide to their funders.
The data collected from the surveys is accessible in the reporting area of the portal, which provides an interface to filter and sort. For example, admins can view a summary of the activities within a project, or they can export a file of aggregated survey answers for a specific project and/or activity.
One of our account managers and a member of the Touretteshero’s team were assigned as primary points of contact for this project. This arrangement allowed both contacts to easily collate and deliver their respective team’s feedback, ideas and information regarding the project quickly and efficiently.
We arranged regular meetings to allow for feedback to be given and received throughout the project. This collaborative approach was an efficient and effective way to ensure the project was delivered on time and on budget.
Due to the potentially sensitive nature of the data being collected, we gave special attention to security, safe storage and managed access of the portal and its data.
The chosen CMS enables us to enforce a robust user access system which includes fine grain permissions control that admin can assign, update or remove as necessary. This restricts access to certain types of data to each user which limits the exposure of the data and ensures quality is maintained.
Access to the site and the data is monitored, allowing user access audits to be conducted. This user audit trail is important to enable admins in identifying unauthorised access and errors to critical data.
Quality assurance (QA) and user acceptance testing (UAT) were carried out to make sure the site was user friendly and functioned as expected.
Our tried and tested QA process has proven very successful. The feedback gathered from our account manager was passed back to the development team. We made any necessary fixes or changes from our own testing as well as taking onboard feedback from the UAT to improve the functionality and usability of the solution.
During the UAT phase of testing Touretteshero arranged focus groups of users to test the system ahead of launch. This provided us with a unique insight into how the end user would interact with the portal in the real world giving us the opportunity to resolve issues that might not have been apparent during development.
Touretteshero team members will conduct surveys in person at their events, so there needed to be a focus on making sure the portal was responsive across multiple device types. Significant testing was conducted to ensure the surveys functioned across all devices and across a variety of browsers.
We provide many different layers of support to our clients throughout and after the completion of a development project. It’s vital that the client feels comfortable using their solution but at the same time can rely on us to be available if they need help or technical assistance at any point.
Upon completion of the project, we carried out several in depth online training sessions to present the portal and its functions to the key stakeholders and team members. This ensured that the team at Touretteshero were comfortable with the portal and could carry out all the tasks it was designed for.
Following the launch of the finished product we provide on-going ad hoc support to Touretteshero. After 12 months using the portal Touretteshero have collated feedback which we have used to put together a statement of work for further improvements and updates.
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