Creating the Outcomes Star System

“This is brilliant! It’s very useful for anyone who wants to assess and analyse their own work and make improvements. It’s very easy and quick to input Star data and I’d recommend that new users have a play and they will soon get to grips with the system. In terms of being intuitive to use, I’d give it five out of five.”
Simon Virth
Supported Housing Manager
Community Campus 87

Client: London Housing Foundation

Partners: Triangle Consulting (authors) and C4 Multimedia (developers)

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We came to this project with a bit of background. We’d designed and edited the 2006 edition of the Outcomes Star collection and had developed and managed the Homeless Outcomes website where the collection was posted - all for the London Housing Foundation.

In 2008, the London Housing Foundation commissioned the development of an Outcomes Star System. We partnered with C4 Multimedia who added their experience of developing sophisticated bespoke web based applications to our experience in design and user experience.

Working closely with C4 and Triangle Consulting, the creators of the Star and the people given the responsibility of running the Foundation’s outcomes programme, we invested significant time in understanding the requirements and exploring the complex questions of what the system should do and how.

This investigation required some detailed thinking about the target audience, exploring their goals and balancing their need for flexibility and their thirst for more and more functionality with the budget.

Jellymould’s Jo Johnson carried out telephone interviews with around 10 potential users of the Outcomes Star System - homelessness professionals within organisations that knew the Star and were keen to have a system to support it. The interviews centred around exploring what additional goals users might have, that may not have picked up during the initial specification process.

Jo designed wireframes showing how each step of using the system would work and explored the questions that arose. Users were given a theoretical task to complete and asked to take a look at the wireframes and describe what they would do next. Tasks that could not be completed quickly, without support, were identified as requiring work and any wording or layout issues that were raised were noted and addressed.

“The way the system instantly draws the Star is brilliant and will be really effective with our clients. The way you can select time periods on the reports is very interesting. It means we’ll be able to see whether clients make more or less progress at certain times of the year. And whether progress is impeded by a change in staffing, or other external factors such as changes in housing provision or policy.”
Nicola Parson
Operational Manager
Cambrian Supported Living Ltd

While many aspects of a task went very smoothly, those that did not were given close attention and changes made.

The final wireframes were then delivered to Jellymould’s Emile Facey for his design magic.

The page designs were also tested with users and this helped us identify where elements on the page needed greater or lesser prominence, or when they might need to be moved or segmented in someway to make the system clearer to use.

“It’s beautiful, so clear and the Star Chart made me go wow! And the options to view different Star readings at once remind me of viewing my bank statements online - very easy to use. I think the keyworker summary - where keyworkers can review their entire caseload - will be very useful.”

“I think the best thing for me was the format, colour and font, I feel a lot of consideration has been given to the layout etc, catering for people with learning difficulties. I found it very user-friendly and easy to navigate to the appropriate page, being able to see previous completed stars or an individual one makes all the difference to the client group I work with.”

Maureen Bobby
Keyworker
The Home Group