DCHS Insights CX Human-Centered Design @ DCHS PROTOTYPE no real data

DCHS Insights CX How We Spotlight

Program knowledge, shared across the department

PULSE is a prototype for spreading practical knowledge of DCHS programs across more than 650 staff. Its weekly recap format is a means, not the goal. The larger decision is what DCHS chooses to measure, explain, celebrate, and place in front of staff—and what they should be able to do differently for clients after seeing it.

The planning question

What should staff know on Monday morning that changes what they do over the coming week?

What this carries forward

Last April, the development of the Janice persona and her journey produced the idea for Resources in Action: staff-led roundtables and “hot lists” to give staff current, working knowledge of each other's programs.

The diagnosis behind it was right, but the reach and cadence of in-person activities are challenging. With more than 650 staff across many programs, roundtables reach a portion of the department at a time, and the knowledge they produce ages between sessions. We are keeping the goal and giving it another way to travel: PULSE is a proposed weekly look back at the previous week, delivered Monday morning, in the format apps use for their end-of-year recaps—for example, “Spotify Wrapped.” It is heavily data-driven, and it carries Resources in Action forward through a rotating program spotlight.

Use PULSE as an editorial prototype

Settle the format quickly so the strategic questions—what runs, why it matters, and who owns it—get the attention.

Experience the format once

Use the prototype to understand pace and scale, then move the conversation away from animation and color.
Edit the content

Keep, cut, combine, or add content based on what staff need—not what happens to be easy to visualize.
Set the cadence

Decide what earns a weekly slot, what rotates, and what should appear only when there is a meaningful signal.
Test feasibility and ownership

For every segment, name the source, definition, reviewer, contributor, deadline, and fallback when content does not arrive.

See the format once

Ninety seconds and one button communicate the pace more completely than a long description. After that, the content—not the animation—is the planning question.

How it opens

Two parts of PULSE

PULSE is designed to cover both quantitative and qualitative information. The quantitative components can be automated and fed by our new data pipelines and DCHS Insights 360 initiative. The qualitative components can advance the idea behind the Resources in Action proposal from the 2025 planning session.

The quantitative half

Numbers that tell a story.

Trends, streaks, records, firsts, surprises, and week-over-week movement. The value is not just the statistic, but the context that helps staff understand why it matters.

Questions to resolve

What number would you actually want to see every Monday?
What is a number that would make you pick up the phone?
What should we be able to celebrate? What should we be embarrassed by?
What goals could we track and visibly make progress against?

The qualitative half

The Program Spotlight.

One program per week on a fixed template, so the owning center can write it in twenty minutes. This is the Resources in Action successor, and the only scene in the deck that can change what somebody does on Tuesday.

Questions to resolve

How do we keep it interesting week over week — what stops this becoming another ignored all-staff email?
What should everyone in the department know, regardless of their program?
Whose center writes the spotlight the week it is your turn?

Editorial decisions

Use the prototype and the two-part structure to decide what earns space in a short weekly publication and what it will take to sustain it.

The Monday test

It's 8:40 Monday. You have 340 unread emails. Why do you open this one? And why do you open it again next Monday?

The staff-persona test: would this Monday's PULSE have changed what the front desk knew when Janice walked up?

Which measures deserve a weekly slot, and what decision or behavior should each support?

What runs every week, what rotates, and what appears only when there is a meaningful signal?

Which goals and targets are authoritative enough to publish?

What belongs in the Program Spotlight, and what keeps it from becoming a brochure?

Who supplies, reviews, and approves each segment—and what is the Friday cutoff?

What privacy, small-number, consent, and interpretation rules apply?

What would make staff trust PULSE enough to open it every Monday?

Candidate content

Five groups, drawn from the nineteen scenes in the prototype. Each has its own page: what it is, options to react to, the questions that have to be settled, and what it would take to produce.

#	Group	What it covers	Slides it provides
01	Volume & Trends	How many people we saw, whether that is up or down, and what moved most — the queue report we already issue, made more comprehensive, deeper, and validated.	Foot trafficTrendlineBiggest moversOutro
02	Breakdowns	Volume split by channel, by program, and by movement in rank — the closest neighbour to the headline numbers, and the group where it is easiest to publish three slides that say one thing.	Phone linesShape of the weekService rankings
03	Spotlights	One program, one community fact, the week's signals, and the people who did the work. Where Resources in Action continues — and the only content here that instructs rather than informs.	Program highlightCensus factPulse newsStaff anniversaries
04	Who We Served	Age, language, and reach in aggregate. The group with the most obvious appeal and the sharpest small-numbers and purpose questions attached to it.	If our clients were 100 peopleLanguages
05	Goals & Targets	Visible progress against the things we have said we will achieve — service levels, quality indicators, and the pace towards an annual commitment.	PacingQuality

What to carry forward

A PULSE content charter

Carry forward a short running order with a purpose, source, owner, cadence, and publication rule for every segment. Record what was deliberately excluded as well as what was kept.

Segment	Standing or rotating	Purpose for staff	Source and definition	Owner and cadence	Publication rule or risk