What is the Provider Cost of Quality Calendar
The provider cost of quality calculator is a tool that allows users to estimate the annual costs and revenues of running a child care program. This information and estimates help child care providers better understand the factors that affect costs.
Team Setup
Challenge
Before I joined the project, a Hueristic Evalution was performed to evaluate the website. The UI and presentation of the old website was outdated, making a website with great information appear disorganized.
From findings, there were certain areas of the website that were highlighted for improvement:
Login Page
The intro paragraph was long and the purpose of the website was not clear at a glance. The site sign in section and new user registration were in between disclaimer text. The order of the text may confuse users and dissuade them from continuing forward.
Site Registration
The only way for a user to access the calculator was through registration. While some users may not have an issue with registering, for those that want to create a scenario, the initial registration could cause an extra barrier.
Creation of a Scenario
Within PCQC a user can create scenarios for two scenario types: Child Care Centers and Family Child Care Provider but in the old system, it was hard to navigate between one or the other. The legacy system did not provide
Calculation of Costs Associated with Childcare
One major pain point for users was viewing the calculations of their inputs. For users of the old system, they had to go back and forth between the section they were currently working on and the “Calculations Page”. Ths back and forth interrupted their experience.
Solution
The reimagined PCQC aimed to remove obstacles that users faced as they attempted to move through the scenario process.
Login Page
Beginning with the Login Page, we wanted to create a page that invited the user to stay. I used the Office of Child Care database to find an image that could easily encapsulate the purpose of the website. For the redesign, we also wanted to provide users with the ability to create a scenario as a “guest”. This would remove the obstacle of registering. The only difference between a registered and guest user is that a registered user can save a scenario and refer back to it later on.
Site Registration
On the registration page, we removed input fields like “organization” and “organization type” as they did not provide any additional value. We also shortened the terms and conditions section and added more prominence to the “accept terms of service” check box.
Dashboard
When a user gets to the dashboard, they are met with two prominent call out sections: “Child Care Centers” and “Family Child Care Providers”. Each scenario now has its own path, making it easier for a user to go directly to the information they are wanting to receive.
In the navbar, we also have the user guide and resources like templates which means that there is now a specific location where users can access help if they need to find it.
Calculation of Costs Associated with Childcare
The last major update was the addition of a calculator steps in every single page throughout the scenario process. As a user begins entering numbers, they are able to see the numbers update after each save. On one page, a user can also move between Baseline and Quality Levels through the user of a dropdown menu.
Because this application is both wide and deep, I decided to use accordions to help relieve some of the mental strain of having to continually scroll down the page.
