Impact Analysis Tool
Converting text-based reporting into data-driven insights
PROBLEM SPACE
Granting organizations that prioritize trust-based funding often receive detailed, text-heavy reports. This create challenges extracting key data points.
SOLUTION
Develop an impact analysis tool that overlays visual elements onto text-based reports, enabling users to quickly pinpoint key organizational benchmarks and convert text into data-driven insights.
understanding reporting
Grants managers need simple and clear ways to track and report on grant progress. Data-driven metrics help them measure results, understand impact, and make better decisions for future funding.
user pain points
Manually searching for relevant information for analysis and reporting can be very time-consuming
It is a challenging to identify key data points quickly and insights are buried within lengthy text.
key findings
Key data metrics are hidden = users need a tool to easily extract them
How can we develop a tool that preserves current processes for organizations and grantees, while making staff workloads easier?
what should we build?
A section where users can define key metrics to track, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
UI overlay that lets users review existing reports and highlight/extract key metrics from plain text
Ability to roll-up new data into comprehensive reports.
Future-proof the deisgn to eventually leverage AI summarization tools
how should we build it?
First, users needed a simple way to identify and define the areas where they wanted to make an impact. This helped them focus on the right metrics that aligned with their goals. By streamlining this process and integrating it into their existing workflows, the tool was able to deliver valuable insights tailored to their needs.
I wanted to ensure that the tool allowed users to select pre-defined metrics they needed to track, making it easier for them to focus on the most relevant data. Once selected, users could highlight specific areas within the report, with the highlighted sections clearly showing the areas of impact. This helped users quickly identify and evaluate the key metrics, streamlining the reporting process while ensuring a clear connection to their goals.
Throughout this process, the grantee’s experience remained unchanged, preserving the integrity of trust-based reporting.
Project Pivot
As priorities shifted away from impact analysis and into broader AI initiatives, this project was ultimately not moved into development.
However, many of the key pain points and concepts uncovered during the research and design process have informed a new project in its initial design phase.
These insights continue to shape our approach, ensuring that user needs remain at the forefront of future solutions.