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TRACS

Service Design & Dashboard: Timeline, Route and Certification System

Service Design & Dashboard:

Timeline, Route and Certification System

Designing the service and dashboard for TRACS, a case-management platform that turns the scattered record of a looked-after child into one journey that a social worker can read in seconds, act on in minutes, and walk into a review already prepared.

MY CORE OWNERSHIP

Service design for a multi-stakeholder children's care platform.

Lean UX hypotheses & experiment planning

STATUS

Discontinued due to budget constraints

ROLE

Service & Product Designer

SCOPE

Dashboard MVP · service design · desktop

CONSTRAINTS

Existing social care workflows

Multiple stakeholder roles

Desktop-first environment

Sensitive child data

Budget-limited MVP

Project discontinued before validation

OVERVIEW

Quick Context

TRACS gives everyone around a looked-after child one shared, secure view of that child’s journey. Today, that journey lives in fragments.

The goal: one child, one journey -every role just a different window onto the same record.

A social worker managing 15–25 children reconstructs each case by hand from case notes, emails, spreadsheets and separate systems every time they act. Preparing a statutory review can take hours as information is gathered across multiple systems. Design target: reduce preparation effort from approximately four hours to under one hour. Outstanding actions are often tracked across multiple places, increasing the risk of missed work. Existing systems record what happened; none answer what is happening now, and what must I do next. TRACS was designed around that question, mapping the service across its roles, defining the MVP through a Lean UX strategy, and designing the dashboard that carries it. The project was shut down before launch under budget constraints; the thinking, and the design, are what remain.

core screens one workflow, login to review

roles sharing one view of the child’s journey

10sec

to answer the five key questions about a child

hour or less- the target for statutory review prep

DISCOVERY

Reconstruction, not recording

Every action began with an archaeology dig.

A social worker managing 15–25 looked-after children rebuilt each child’s situation from case notes, emails, spreadsheets and separate systems, before many day-to-day activities.

One review: hours of assembly.

Preparing a statutory review meant hours of searching and copying across systems time that came straight out of time spent with children.

Statutory deadlines lived in memory.

Outstanding actions sat in heads and ad-hoc lists, so deadlines slipped, Missed actions can delay care planning, reviews and follow-up activities.

Managers often relied on additional status updates because progress wasn't easily visible across cases.

Managers often relied on additional status

updates because progress wasn't easily visible

across cases.

Without passive visibility, status meetings multiplied. Every system in place recorded what had happened; none could answer what is happening now, and what must I do next.

IRO

DESIGN DECISIONS 01

One Child. One Journey. Many Perspectives.

One Child.

One Journey.

Many Perspectives.

One Child. One Journey. Many Perspectives.

There is only one child journey. Every professional sees the same journey through the lens of their own responsibilities.

PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE

Child Journey

THE SINGLE RECORD

Shared Timeline

Shared Care Plan

Shared Reviews

Shared Actions

Shared Evidence

Shared Notes

ROLE-BASED VIEWS

SOCIAL WORKER

Manage caseload

Prepare reviews

Update care plan

Record progress

Manage caseload

Prepare reviews

Update care plan

Record progress

IRO

FUTURE

Review oversight

Challenge decisions

Monitor compliance

Review oversight

Challenge decisions

Monitor compliance

KEY WORKER

FUTURE

Daily updates

Complete actions

Record observations

Daily updates

Complete actions

Record observations

TEAM MANAGER

FUTURE

Team visibility

Workload

Risk overview

Team visibility

Workload

Risk overview

FOSTER CARER

FUTURE

Child updates

Appointments

Communication

Child updates

Appointments

Communication

One shared journey.

Role-specific experiences.

Not separate products.

TRACS treats the journey as the record. The proposed navigation avoids document-first organisation. Everything a professional needs is a lens on one timeline: Overview for the situation now, Timeline for the story, Actions for what must happen, Review for statutory preparation.

The journey is the record

Documents, notes and updates hang off the child’s timeline there is nothing to file, and nothing to lose.

Triage, not an alphabet

The caseload orders children by who needs attention first overdue actions and review proximity not by surname.

Roles extend, not multiply

Version1 proves value with one team of social workers; IROs and key workers later open their own window onto the same journey.

DESIGN DECISIONS 02

A dashboard that answers in ten seconds

The Child Overview was designed against one hard bar: within ten seconds, a social worker should be able to answer what is happening with this child, what needs attention, what should I do next, when is the next review, and what has changed recently. In existing workflows, answering those questions often requires searching across multiple systems.

A worker shouldn’t have to open ten documents to know how a child is doing.

Situation now, story below

The Overview holds the present; the Journey Timeline holds the child’s story. One scroll, one narrative.

Actions surfaced, not stored

Overdue actions and approaching reviews rise to the top on their own. The design reduces reliance on memory by surfacing upcoming statutory actions automatically.

The child never gets lost

A persistent header and tab navigation hold the child’s context while the worker moves between lenses.

Trade-offs & Constraints. Every field must pay the worker back

Trade-offs & Constraints. Every

field must pay the worker back

The anti-goal was another system to feed: every field TRACS asks for had to repay the worker in saved time. The riskiest assumption was trust. Workers rely on the journey view only while it is demonstrably current, and stale data would quickly undermine trust in the journey view. We also said no early: no child-facing views in V1, no manager dashboards, no “more fields, more value”.

DESIGN DECISIONS 03

Reviews assembled, not compiled

The Review Workspace turns preparation from a search-and-copy exercise into an act of confirmation. The design assumes the journey becomes the primary source for assembling review information. So the review largely assembles itself. The target is preparation falling from around four hours to under one. This is what a local authority is really buying: recovered social-worker time.

The record was always there. TRACS made it readable and reusable.

From hours to one or less

Review preparation draws directly from the timeline and actions assembled by default, edited by exception.

Compliance as a by-product

Reviews held on time, care plans current, evidence traceable. Governance falls out of the workflow, not policed onto it.

Passive visibility

Managers can understand progress without requesting separate status updates. Status meetings shrink without a single Version1 dashboard built for them.

IMPACT

Reflection

The product ended; the thinking holds.

TRACS was shut down before launch when budget constraints caught up with it. What remains is the part I’d defend anywhere: a service designed around one falsifiable bar; Can TRACS answer faster than the current process? ; and screens that were designed around that benchmark.

Design the questions before the screens.

The most useful artefacts weren’t mockups: the five key questions, the 10-second test, the triage logic. They kept every screen honest and every debate short.

If it had continued

• Run the 10-second test: five social workers, a seeded Child Overview, five questions each.

• The concierge trust test keep one child’s journey current for two weeks and see whether workers check TRACS before their own notes.

• Open the IRO and key-worker windows onto the same journey.

• Run the 10-second test: five social workers, a seeded Child Overview, five questions each.

• The concierge trust test keep one child’s journey current for two weeks and see whether workers check TRACS before their own notes.

• Open the IRO and key-worker windows onto the same journey.