Case study · 04 / 05

Impact Atlas

Designing scalable tools for global poverty-reduction programs: mapping participant selection, field visits, and multi-level reporting across program organizers, branch managers, and regional teams.

Role

UX Design Lead

Timeline

July 2015 to January 2016

Platform

Field research
Whiteboard sessions
Axure Pro

Impact Atlas marketing page showing visualization in the background.

Graduation milestones tracked

1.6M

Households graduated from the program

20-30

Participants per community cohort

$3.20

Returned for every $1 invested

Participant tracking for graduation programs ran entirely on paper: ledgers carried house to house.

That system worked, but it didn't scale across a hierarchy: Program Organizer, Branch Manager, Regional Manager, and Finance Manager each needed a different view of the same data.

Built for Amplifier Strategies, digitizing a program running BRAC's Ultra-Poor Graduation approach.

Handwritten paper form used to track a participant's savings and program membership in the field

The system before Impact Atlas: a handwritten paper form, tracked house to house.

The paper process already encoded a working hierarchy: PO collects, BM verifies, RM analyzes, FM oversees.

Digitizing it meant preserving that real structure, not redesigning how the program worked.

Role-specific views, built directly from the user stories each role already lived by.

Proposed strategy narrative mapped by role (Program Organizer, Branch Manager, Regional Manager) from the journey map

Role-specific views, mapped from the journey: click to open full PDF

Research started from the paper system already in use (weekly visit schedules, means-test forms, hand-tallied participant ledgers filled out in the field) and from direct conversation with the team about who needed to see what.

Women in a program cohort receiving supplies in the field — The people the paper system was tracking: a program cohort in the field.

Field team reviewing a handwritten participant ledger in a village setting — The paper system this was replacing: a handwritten participant ledger, reviewed in the field.

Hand-drawn village maps and a participant record book, full view — The hand-drawn village map and record book, in full, click to enlarge.

A tethered cow at a participant's homestead in the field — A household asset in the field, the kind of enterprise the program tracked.

All field photos shot by me during the original program visits.

Unlike the other case studies here, this one started on paper: a hand-drawn participant profile sketch, worked out before any digital tool touched it. User stories were written out role by role on a whiteboard, then mapped into a role/data architecture, before any of it moved into annotated wireframes with roles and edge cases called out directly on the frame.

Team member reviewing early sketches at a table — Early sketches under review with the team.

Whiteboard with user stories written for each program role — User stories, one per role: M&E Director, Program Organizer, Regional Manager, Branch Manager.

Whiteboard mapping data and role architecture across PO, BM, RM, and FM — Role and data architecture: what each layer of the hierarchy needed access to.

The participant profile, sketched on paper first.

Annotated wireframe of the participant selection flow with color-coded role tags and edge-case notes — Annotated wireframes: each screen tagged top-left with the color-coded role it belongs to (PO, BM, RM), the same colors carried through the journey map's swim lanes.

Mobile wireframe of the Impact Atlas navigation menu, participants list, and landing page — Mobile navigation: main menu through to a participant's landing page.

Full wireframe deck, 60 pages →

A participant profile view tracking graduation across 10 milestones, deployed across desktop, tablet, and mobile, localized into French and Arabic alongside English for the regions each program ran in.

Impact Atlas shown across laptops, tablets, and phones, in English, French, and Arabic — Deployed across devices and localized into French and Arabic, alongside English.

Impact Atlas was built for a program running BRAC's Ultra-Poor Graduation approach, the same model behind the poverty ranking, means test, and participant selection stages this tool digitizes.

That approach has a strong track record: 95% of participants lift out of extreme poverty by program's end, and 93% still show those gains ten years later.

These are results from the methodology this program runs, not metrics from the tool itself, worth stating plainly rather than implying otherwise.

Systems Design
Social Impact
Enterprise