Colette's Childrens Home
Protecting user privacy and data tracking
Product Design
Enterprise
2024
Role
Contract Product Designer
Timeline
Jan 2024 - June 2026
Team
1 PM, 4 Designers, 8 Developers
Overview
The Client
Colette's Children's Home is a non-profit shelter for women and children experiencing homelessness. Until recently it ran entirely on paper: every client intake filled out by hand, every grant report assembled manually in Excel. That mattered more than it sounds, because those grant reports are what fund the housing. The staff cared deeply and knew the work inside out, but as the organization and its program participants grew, the tools couldn't keep up.
The Task
Design a 0-to-1 platform to replace paper intake and manual reporting, serving three very different user types (Admin, Case Manager, and Clients) while protecting sensitive case data from their program participants.
My Impact
Shipped CCH's first 0-to-1 digital platform. For the first time, staff had reliable, exportable data for monthly grant reporting, which increased task success by 30% and reduced time-on-task by 45% in usability testing.
Research
How might we build one source of truth without creating one more complicated tool?
I started by listening to the people who would use the system every day, deliberately spanning the range from confident admins to first-time tech users. Across 10 interviews and 4 journey maps, one pattern kept surfacing: the problem was never a lack of effort, it was a fragmented set of tools that made already complex work harder than it needed to be. That reframe mattered, because it meant my job wasn't to add features, it was to remove friction.
Some quotes from my interviews:
Fragmented Workflow
"Having to go to multiple platforms to check participant information is really tedious."
Information Overload
"There's so much information I don't know what to pay attention to."
Lack of Clarity
"I'm not a math person and calculating the monthly totals myself is strenuous."
Overall, they needed a tool that works with them, not against them.
Existing form tools made data collection easier, but weren’t built for CCH’s full workflow
For competitive analysis, I compared Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Microsoft Forms, and Google Sheets to understand common patterns around onboarding, progress, validation, customization, and completion. The strongest tools showed clear progress, prevented errors, and kept things simple, and I carried those patterns forward. But none of them solved CCH's full workflow, because they stopped at collection. We needed a system that kept the data useful long after it was entered, all the way through to a finished grant report.
Define
One source of truth, three different needs
What looked like one product was really three experiences: Admins who owned the data, Case Managers working with clients day to day, and Clients completing intake, often under stress. Each needed something different from the same system.
From there I defined what each role actually needed to accomplish, and just as importantly, what to leave out of v1 so the product stayed focused on the one job that mattered most.
And here's a high level overview of the current flow and how our product would be introduced into their workflow:
The real challenge became access, not just information
Building the screens was never the hard part. The real challenge was permissions: deciding what each role could see, edit, and approve, so the same data could serve all three users without ever exposing sensitive information to the wrong one.
I mapped the end-to-end flow for each role, from sign-in through their core task, so the team could see every screen and decision point before we built. The non-negotiable job was grant reporting, because that is what keeps the doors open, so everything scoped for v1 laddered up to producing reliable, exportable data.
Ideate
Once access was clear, the product could take shape
With the permission model defined, I worked alongside eight engineers to map and pressure-test how admins, case managers, and clients would move through the product. We validated feasibility early, then translated those flows into Figma and began designing the core experience.
The Login
Three different users, one shared login
Our first concept gave Admins, Case Managers, and Clients their own authentication paths. It felt tailored, but underneath we were maintaining three versions of essentially the same experience and exposing account creation before we had established who should be allowed to create one.
We kept role selection because it gives users an immediate point of orientation, but standardized everything underneath it. Each role now follows the same credential flow, with an additional PIN verification step before entering their workspace.
Admin Dashboard
Everything was visible, but nothing felt actionable
My first dashboard prioritized access to information, not action. Client records, statistics, donations, and account tools were all available, but everything carried the same weight. Admins could see the data, but had to scan through it to figure out what actually needed their attention.
The final dashboard is organized around what admins actually need to do: review edit requests, monitor client records, manage donations, and prepare reports. The biggest shift was governance. Case managers can request corrections, but admins review and approve them before the master record changes, keeping client data controlled and auditable.
Case Manager Portal
Showing what matters most
Our first case-manager portal inherited too much from the admin experience: the same dense tables, navigation, and information structure, with restricted actions simply removed or disabled. Permissions were technically different, but the experience still asked case managers to navigate an admin-oriented system.
We redesigned the portal around what case managers actually do: find assigned clients, understand their status, review relevant records, and update information. Instead of giving them a reduced version of the admin dashboard, we gave them a workspace built around their own responsibilities.
The goal wasn’t fewer features. It was implementing the right features for the right role.
Client Facing Forms
The structure was right but, the experience was still too heavy
The mid-fidelity flow already divided intake into five stages, giving clients a clear sense of where they were. But within each stage, most questions were stacked vertically with large, full-width inputs. The form was organized, yet still required more scrolling and scanning than necessary
We broke every form into single-question flows with a progress bar at the top. Large touch targets for iPad. Back/forward navigation so nothing felt final until the user is ready to move on and the most important granular detail was the language. The tone shifted from "fill this out" to "we're just going to ask you a few things." We wanted the form to feel warm and friendly and this final iteration took this into account.
Solution
Grant Reporting
This is the job the whole platform was built to serve. What used to take days of copying numbers between spreadsheets now exports in a few clicks, and because every record flows through one governed source of truth, the monthly report comes out clean and consistent every time. Reliable data here is what lets CCH prove their impact to funders and keep the housing paid for.
Product lifecyle for Case Managers
The entire toolkit tailored for Case Managers
Design System
Creating a scalable identity
Color, type, spacing, and core components built from scratch to be legible and accessible, with proper contrast and a clear hierarchy.
Reflection
This project was tough, but I learned so much
This was my first time building a product from nothing and despite it being one of my first shipped products, I learned alongside other engineers and designers who allowed me to grow so much in this space. There was no existing design system to reference so we were able to create a truly one of a kind product and that turned out to be one of the most valuable constraints I've ever worked within.
I'm glad we crossed paths. I hope it left you inspired!
@ Jerry Nguyen 2026
heyo!
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I'm glad we crossed paths. I hope it left you inspired!
@ Jerry Nguyen 2026