Understanding Florida Social Workers’ Workflow & Information Needs
University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) x Florida Community Innovation (FCI) Research Project
Overview of FL Social Worker Journey Map.
Timeline
February 2022 - April 2022
Skills
Writing interview protocols, recruitment, interviewing, generative research, journey mapping
Tools
Figma, Zoom, Miro
Team
Anna Gilhool (myself), Lulu Zhou, Nadia Fanaras, Pooja Mandagere
Project Overview & Research Questions
Florida Community Innovation (FCI)’s mission is to close the information gap for low-resourced Floridians and Floridians in crisis situations with an interactive map called the Florida Community Resource Map (FRM). The last release of the FRM was version 2 (V2). Since V2, FCI has received feedback from non-profit directors and map beneficiaries but still lacks knowledge on how social workers might use the map to support beneficiaries. Since the map includes resources such as food banks, FCI believes it could be helpful for social service providers and their beneficiaries. Our team conducted 1-hour semi-structured interviews with ~5 Florida social workers across central and northwest Florida to learn social workers’ thought processes, common tasks, goals, and pain points. Our goal was to answer the following questions:
What are Florida social workers’ day-to-day workflow?
What are the challenges Florida social workers face in their work?
What information do Florida social workers need to successfully reach their goals?
How do Florida social workers find or get access to the information they need?
How do social workers use tools to communicate with clients and share resources?
Answering these questions allowed us to journey map FL social workers’ workflow, identify challenges within their workflow, and pinpoint opportunities for the FRM to mitigate the challenges FL social workers experience.
Recruitment
Emailed FL social worker contacts provided by FCI
Snowball sampling (asked interviewees if they knew of anyone that fit our participant requirements that would be interested in interviewing)
Interviews
5, 1-hour Zoom interviews with FL social workers
Questions were centered around Florida social workers' day-to-day tasks, tool usage, information needs, and challenges faced
Key Findings
What insights did we gain from our research?
💡 FL social workers have multiple strategies for looking for resources but don't have one reliable, consistent medium
💡 FL social workers don't have a formal way to store resources
💡 Information regarding vendors/organizations is constantly changing, making certain info out-of-date
Opportunities
What actions can FCI take to support FL social workers?
✅ FRM to become a trusted central resource hub for FL social workers through reviews & comments
✅ Allow the map to be open-source, let social workers add resources to the map and star resources they find helpful
✅ Allow FL social workers to flag inaccurate and out-of-date information
Journey Map
Impact
Help FCI understand users they are designing for to enable them to build a platform that fits their users needs.
Ensure new team members can get up to speed quickly on users journey and needs, since the non-profit rotates volunteers frequently.
“We just wanted to thank you again for your amazing report. We got great feedback from our partners on it, it's going to be required reading for our board as we decide on operations for this year, and our students have learned from it, as well.”
To learn more about the findings from interviews with FL social workers, read the full report: