The Midwest Evaluation and Research (MER) app
The Client.
Midwest Evaluation & Research helps support the research and study of various underserved communities. With every project they support, they divide the project participants into different cohorts, and work with the participants in each cohort to gather feedback about their experiences via surveys.
The Challenge.
MER needed a way to stay in touch with the participants in their projects. The surveys they send to the participants can be months apart, which makes it difficult to reach participants who may have changed their contact information in that time. The follow-up surveys are very important to the research projects, so there was a need for a better way to ensure extended contact with the participants. MER had previously developed an app to solve this problem, but the challenge persisted.
The Solution.
We worked with the MER team to create a new app from scratch that could suit their current needs as well as scale up to accommodate hundreds of projects with thousands of participants. We came up with two platforms: a mobile app for participants to create a profile where they can update their contact information and access their surveys, and a web application that lets the client manage the projects and send surveys and notifications to participants through the app.
Mobile App Features.
Login and Profile.
User can access the app with a project code and create a personal account.- Choose to use the app in English or Spanish.
- Add and edit personal contact information in their profile.
Surveys.
- See when surveys are available and access the link to take a survey.
- User can perform the surveys, surveys will load from a third party site.
Notifications.
- User can view a log of notifications sent from the project admin.
- For a new survey, user will receive a notification. User can see the full log of notification.
Web App Features.
Create and Manage Projects.
- Admins can create a new project in the web panel, and give it a project code so only specific users can access it in the mobile app.
- The Admin can then create multiple cohorts for a project to assign the participants to.
- Admins can view all of the projects and corresponding cohorts, and see the list of all the participants in each.
Participant Management.
- Admins can add new participants to a cohort, either individually or via batch upload.
- If the Admin adds the user, that same user can still sign up on the mobile app with the project code, and the system will recognize the users are the same based on the user’s personal details.
- When users sign up themselves, they will be unassigned to a cohort.
- Admin can view those that are unassigned and assign them to the correct cohort.
- Admins can view and edit the details of their participants to update in the mobile app as well.
Sending Surveys.
- Admins can add new surveys to share with the cohorts in a project.
- They can provide the link to the survey, the code needed to access the survey, and the date that it will be active.
- If the survey is not ready yet, Admin can still add the survey but without the link, and add the link later whenever the survey is active.
Notifications .
- Admins can create notifications to send to their participants.
- They can choose which users to send the notification to, and can provide a custom title and body depending on their needs for the notification.
Super Admin.
- All Admin features.
- Create and manage Admin accounts.
- Delete projects or participants.
