Fayette County Public Schools closed in March of 2020, and didn't allow students back in schools for almost an entire year later.

Overview

Fayette County Public Schools faced a crisis. Angry parents yelled at the county board meetings and demanded the kids go back to school after the students had been home for months due to COVID-19. Teachers were afraid to go into school, fearing they would get COVID-19 from fellow teachers. Parents didnt want to send their kids to school, with the fear of getting COVID-19 from students or other teachers. Reporting directly to the Superintendent, I created and implemented a contact tracing system for employees with a companion, QR-code based mobile app. This is one instance where UX extended beyond the screen, it helped save lives, reduce the spread of COVID-19 and keep our 50+ schools open.

Strategy

We needed to use a no-code app builder to build a QR-code based mobile app rapidly. This would allow people to quickly scan in and out of classrooms, creating a database for school leaders to use for rapid, contact tracing. QR codes would be specific to each school, and would need to be placed outside of classrooms that were frequently entered.

Challenge

When someone tested positive for COVID-19, they would contact the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department. The health department would take more than 48 hours to contact the school where the infected person worked. By that time, people who were close-contacts of that person had already talked to up to dozens of people in the school and been in close proximity with them, increasing the risk of spreading COVID-19. Plus, the infected person almost never remembered exactly who they were around while they were contagious. We needed a solution to drastically reduce the contact tracing time.

Role, Scope and Constraints

Public schools don't have big budgets for staffing. This meant that I had to be the UX Designer, Researcher, Graphic Designer and Developer all at once. Plus, this was my first mobile application that I had made! The goal was to create a QR-code based mobile application that would allow people to scan in out of rooms, and send that information to a backend database that principals and school leaders could access if there was a COVID-19 case. Principals could look up who was around the individual during the time they were infected and have them quarantine to keep the building safe. I called it a proactive contact tracing system, which was faster and more efficient than the health department's system, which was retroactive and depended on the infected person's memory.

Screenshot from the training that went to thousands of FCPS employees. This was asychronous and showed employees how to use the app.

Along with mask-wearing, the Scan Space app helped reduce the spread of COVID-19 by reducing the contact-tracing process in school from 48 hours to about 4 minutes.

Results

Through the Scan Space mobile application and contact tracing system, we increased positive attitudes towards returning to school and decreased the contact tracing time by over 10,000% (from ~48 hours to ~4 minutes)

Process

Interviews were essential to create the perfect solution for this problem. From C-Suite execs to classroom teachers, I needed to get their feedback to create a unique solution that would work for everyone. Quantitative research was a key next step, because I was able to accurately assess the discrepancies that caused issues in the health departments process. After aggregating the data, I collaborated with the Director of Technology and created wireframes, mockups and prototypes of the app and conducted user testing to see what painpoints existed for users. I got a ton of great feedback and I was able to conduct additional usability testing to complete the design. After launch, user feedback led to various improvements.

With cases being so high in Fayette County (over 99,000 cases), teachers and leaders both expressed worry and fear over returning to school in person.

Conclusion

We were the only school district in Kentucky to implement a system of this complexity (to our knowledge). While other schools had major, district-wide shutdowns due to COVID-19, we were able to eliminate district wide shut-downs, decrease interruptions in the learning process and save public tax dollars.