Real-time data dashboard answers the biggest question for People’s Law School
This case study is based on a presentation by Drew Jackson and Chris McGrath at the Legal Services Corporation's annual "Innovations in Technology" conference in Phoenix, Arizona on January 20, 2023.
Tangowork worked with the lawyers at People’s Law School to answer the question: are we making a difference?
As a non-profit, People’s Law School is mission-driven: they want to help people deal effectively with the legal problems of daily life. They collect plenty of data, like how many people use their website, how long they stayed, and what they looked at. But what they really want to know is this: “Are we making a difference?” Tangowork helped them answer that question.
We held a series of workshops with the lawyers at People’s Law School to identify trackable metrics that aligned with the HEART framework for analytics: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success.
Visitors to the website of People’s Law School are now presented with one of five happiness-related questions, selected at random, followed by an open-ended prompt.
Adoption, engagement and retention metrics were already being captured, primarily through Google Analytics. But happiness metrics — the “are we making a difference” metrics — were limited to data captured by a single question, “Was this helpful?” The team decided they wanted answers to five carefully selected questions:
Was this helpful? (Yes/No)
Did the information increase your understanding? (1–5)
Did the information help you identify what to do next? (1–5)
Will your visit help you resolve or avoid an issue? (1–5)
How likely are you to recommend People’s Law School to a friend or colleague? (0–10)
We planned on presenting a single question to each visitor, selected at random, followed by an open-ended prompt, “We welcome your feedback or suggestions”.
We examined off-the-shelf software to power the survey, but nothing met all of our key requirements:
Minimal impact on page weight
Support for partial responses
Support for Google Sheets as data source
So we custom-coded a survey in Next.JS that met all our criteria.
Tangowork developed a survey that added just 3KB to the page weight. In contrast, the same survey developed in JotForm was 50X larger, and in SurveySparrow, almost 1000X larger!
In the video above, notice how data is written to Google Sheets the instant the user clicks on the survey — whether or not they answer the open-ended prompt or click “submit”.
Finally, Tangowork designed and implemented a data dashboard in Looker Studio to present all of People’s metrics in a meaningful way.
The real-time data dashboard Tangowork designed for People’s Law School displays metrics in four key categories: Adoption, Engagement, Retention, and the holy grail: Happiness, aka “Are we making a difference?”
The complete system has been in place for 8 months. Is People’s Law School making a difference? According to our real-time data dashboard, 80% said the information was helpful, and 60% said it will help them resolve or avoid a legal issue (results from Q4 2022).
"We now have powerful evidence that we’re making a difference,” said Drew Jackson, lawyer and legal content developer at People’s Law School. “That’s a pretty nice message to share with staff and stakeholders."
Visitors to the websites have sent a powerful message to People’s Law School: “Yes, you’re making a difference!” Results from Q4 2022.
Tangowork continues to help People’s Law School refine their real-time data dashboard.
Contact us to discuss how we can help improve your website data collection and analysis.