Santa Clara University’s Resilient Families Program, now known as Safe Secure and Loved (SSL), was designed by former Child Studies Chair Barbara Burns to help enhance cognitive development and parent-child attachment for babies to six-year-old children. SSL brings SCU students together with community agencies and neighborhood residents to engage in a six-part course that improves family wellbeing while helping both college students and community parents to better understand the psychology of early childhood development.
Resilient Families Program page on the SCU website (no longer active)
Technologies used
- HTML & CSS
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- PHP
Challenges faced by the client
The client’s target demographic is primarily Spanish-speaking at home, so all of the program materials must be bilingual. As a result, the client used a lot of paper… most of it ending up recycled or thrown away without being used.
To reduce waste and improve engagement, the client asked for a digital tool to help manage their participants. Their complex system of paper worksheets, in-person meetings, and homework for the participants wasn’t delivering the results they needed. They had a high participant drop-out rate, low engagement, and a difficult time reaching participants with low or limited literacy.
My senior thesis project at SCU
For my senior thesis project, I partnered with another computer engineering student to develop a website framework for the Resilient Families Program that removed their barriers to success.
We sought to:
- Provide an interface that users can toggle between languages
- Use icon-based navigation and structure to help users with low or limited literacy
- Present only the surveys, journal entries, and background information relevant to the participant’s current stage in the program
- Avoid colors commonly associated with local gangs, and steer the color palette toward calming, relaxing colors
Our solution was well-received, although we ran out of time to effectively implement it before graduation. We handed off all of our code and assets to our academic advisor, who assured us they would find someone else to continue the project for the Resilient Families Program.
Screenshots
