Kilifi Data Dashboard

Promoting open governance through data visualization.

Context

The Problem

Kilifi County, situated in Southern Kenya, covers an area of 12,246km² and has over 1400 public projects in different stages of development. The County Government lacked a digital platform to update and visualize data on the existing projects.

Our Solution & Vision

For the first phase, we developed a simple web application to enable research assistants, dubbed youth fellows, to collect data on county projects. We assigned each of the 35 wards in the county to one youth fellow. Their task was to collect data and report on the status of different projects in their ward, looking at:

• How the project was implemented – were citizens involved in the implementation?
• The status of the project – Is it complete? Is it serving the community as intended?

For the second phase, we developed a public-facing data dashboard that would display the analyzed data in a simple and readable manner.

Our vision was to pave way for a future where data can be made available to the public so that meaningful engagement can take place.

My Role

I created wireframes and high-fidelity mockups for the data collection tool and data dashboard. Thereafter, I created interactive prototypes to demonstrate how the applications would work.

Process

Research & Findings

Our research team conducted workshops and training sessions to help youth fellows embrace technology during data collection exercises. They discovered that many youth fellows and fellow residents of Kilifi County were unaware of public projects in their county.

An interview with one of the youth fellows

Training a youth fellow to use geodata

Identifying the Key Goals

We identified the key strategic goals:

• We wanted to simplify the data collection process for youth fellows
• We wanted to present the data in a simple readable manner for the public

Designing the Project Questionnaire

We came up with a questionnaire that would be used to collect project data in the field. The developers then digitized this questionnaire for the data collection application.

An interview with one of the youth fellows

Mapping the Features

We mapped out the features to determine what would be included in the first and consequent releases.

Wireframing the Solution

I created up some low-fi mockups get feedback from the development team.

Wireframe of the research assistant dashboard

Wireframe of the project details screen

High Fidelity Mockups

I mocked up the screens in Figma and worked closely with the developers to ensure the frontend application matched the design.

User login

Research assistant dashboard

Homepage (public-facing app)

Project details (public-facing app)

Results

The youth fellows were excited to see the results of their work on the public-facing dashboard. They expressed gratitude for the opportunity to take part in mapping the county projects. In the past, they had collected data by walking around the county using lots of paperwork, but with the skills acquired during the training, they looked forward to using digital data collection and reporting with confidence.

Challenges

• I was new to the team and this was my first time working fully remotely. Initially, it was a challenge dealing with the new dynamics but I learned to adapt and maximize my productivity.
• We had a tight deadline to deliver the application and little time to train the research assistants and supervisors to use the system. To solve this, we created a staging environment days before the launch. This also helped us catch bugs and gaps, which we addressed in the final build.