TDP Project Update - January 2022
While past updates have been shared in PDF format, this update and those going forward will be shared on this website. We've made this change so as to centralize our project update materials and simplify the process of making each update fully accessible.
Team Updates
Since our last update in August Sreedevi has come onboard the project team as another Sr. Researcher & Designer.
Where we've been
This round of research was focused around two main areas: Partial submissions and evaluating design concepts for TDP’s Submission History page. We aimed to:
- Understand the impact of not accepting partial data submission on grantees who currently rely on it
- Identify opportunities to mitigate any negative effects or challenges of this change
- Capture preferences between design variations for TDP’s Submission History page and concerning “Minimum Viable Attributes”
Ultimately investigating these points allowed us to arrive upon a validated design for Submission History, intuitive language to use in and around that page, and identified opportunities to improve other upcoming focuses of design and research including Onboarding, Reporting, and Error Guidance.
We wanted to understand user preferences on two variations of TDP's Submission History page
We tested two versions of TDP’s Submission History page mockups to understand OFA regional staff’s and grantees’ minimum requirements for file information that they need to see from resubmitted files.
| Version | Details |
|---|---|
| Version A | Cases (Accepted, Rejected, Total) + Rejected Records by type |
| Version B | Cases (Accepted, Rejected, Total) |
Grantee participants expressed a desire to see historic error patterns in their files
For many participants, insight into error patterns would help them can identify and avoid mistakes that recur over a period of time. For many errors this could help grantees implement measures to prevent those in future submissions.
We tested the language and meaning conveyed for acceptance status messages
Each file that a grantee transmits to the OFA also will be attached to an 'acceptance status' - conveying whether data in a file passed the necessary quality checks and is ready to be accepted.
| Status Message | What it should convey to grantees |
|---|---|
| Accepted | a file has no errors, meets reporting requirements and is accepted into the database |
| Accepted with Errors | a file meets reporting requirements, but has errors that need to be addressed |
| Rejected | a file did not pass data quality checks and is rejected |
All our participants successfully interpreted what an "Error Report" in TDP is and how it relates to a particular file in Submission History
Just like TDP's new submission status messages (Accepted, Accepted with Errors, Rejected), the term "Error Report" represents a change form the current state of submission involving Transmission Reports or Questionable Case reports. Despite the change, our participants were all able to identify that an Error Report in TDP will fill the same role those existing reports do.
We found that grantees who currently submit partial data coded by fTANF may benefit from material detailing how to move to submitting complete data
To help these grantees navigate TDP not accepting partial data we’ve worked with DIGIT to identify an fTANF process and we plan to create a dedicated guide detailing how to submit complete data via fTANF as part of our upcoming work on Onboarding.
Where we're going
How we'll release Submission History in TDP
We plan to take a phased approach to introduce different attributes of the Submission History page. The pilot program will include only file names and date of submission. Future releases will introduce more functionality to this page.
Vote totals and a number of other insights from this round have led us to prioritizing Version B as the best baseline experience of Submission History. However, as we move into onboarding and other upcoming areas of research we'll examine the best ways to also include the records-level data a number of participants appreciated in TDP. Either as a future enhancement to the Submission History page, or as a part of other functionality such as Reporting.
| Attributes | Release 1 (Past) | Release 2 (Pilot) | Release 3 (Future) |
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| Date & Time Stamp |
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| Acceptance Status |
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| Accepted / Rejected Case Totals |
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| Error Reports |
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Onboarding Research
One of the next phases of research will involve us researching optimal ways to introduce users to the new TDP platform and familiarize them with its new features.
The onboarding experience may ultimately include:
- Downloadable instructions
- In-app walkthroughs
- FAQs
- Video tutorials
- Other resources/methods that we find to be useful
We now have office hours!
In addition to many upcoming structured and planned rounds of research we'd love to offer up some unstructured time to hear from you. If you have questions about the project, feedback about elements of the current system you'd like to see TDP address, or have anything else in mind, we'll be offering a number of time slots to hear it each month. If the available times don't work with your schedule or you'd simply like to get it touch via email, please feel free to continue reaching out via mreiter@goraft.tech.
Book Office HoursFull Research Synthesis
As always, our complete research synthesis has been published in the project GitHub repo and can be found below if you’d like to read more about our process and findings.
View Full Synthesis