Alternatives’ mission is to provide behavioral health and restorative justice resources to youth in Chicago. During spring quarter, TechTeam will help them by redesigning and updating their WordPress website to best reflect this goal. TechTeam will remove information that is no longer relevant, redesign the website’s layout to be accessible and usable, and add new features to help them with their new mission statement. Also, TechTeam plans to help Alternatives with a future project for Autumn quarter 2021 by creating an app to give youth an approachable method to access the resources that they need. This spring, we will do initial preparation for the app project if time permits, including creating drafts for how the app might look in Figma, researching existing apps with similar goals, and preparing a template for workshops on app design.
Read MoreSue Duncan Children's Center
Sue Duncan Children’s Center (SDCC) is a non-profit organization situated in the South side of Chicago whose mission is to enrich the lives of youth of all ages by nurturing their academic, athletic, and artistic growth. TechTeam will help develop both a new frontend and backend for the SDCC’s website, including a reference page for similar organizations, a convenient way to display and manage media like bog posts, photos and videos, and a clean information displays.
Read MoreMusical Arts Institute
The Musical Arts Institute is a non-profit providing high-quality music lessons to underserved populations on Chicago’s South Side. TechTeam will the institute in improvement in their administrative web infrastructure to support the coordination of lesson scheduling online. We will tackle this issue via a redesign of the backend Institute’s Wix-based webpage, implementing features that enable such diverse stakeholders as students, parents, staff, and board members to log in and view pertinent administrative information.
Read MoreChicago Tool Library
The Chicago Tool Library is a tool bank and community maker space that provides Chicagoans with access to tools and resources to learn, share, and create. TechTeam helped redesign and update the Library’s Resource Index page to assist visitors in find tool-related resources around the city. Additionally, we added an interactive map to ease locating resource physically and a resource submission feature.
Read MoreExperimental Station: Blackstone Bicycle Works Web App
Blackstone Bicycle Works is a community bike shop and youth education program of the Experimental Station. Blackstone is structured as a retail, full-service bike shop that offers an "earn and learn," hands-on bicycle mechanics curriculum to its participants. TechTeam worked to create a web app that would allow students to check-in/check-out when they volunteer their time, an easier hour-tracking method than paper logs. This web app also included the tracking of the youths' skills and achievement levels.
Read MoreStudent Counseling Services
Student Counseling Service (SCS) is committed to promoting the mental health and well-being of UChicago undergraduate and graduate students by providing accessible, high-quality, culturally sensitive mental health services. TechTeam redesigned their website and built an interactive chatbot to improve navigation of the resources SCS has to offer, providing extra outreach and consultation to the University community.
Read MoreShe Votes Illinois
She Votes Illinois is a statewide political action committee aimed at highlighting the importance of women’s voices in elections, government, and policymaking. TechTeam helped redesign the She Votes Illinois website, adding different functions (e.g. drop down menus, options to donate, an events calendar, etc). Additional tasks for this project included identifying a server, resolving other backend issues, and redesigning the interface to make the website more clear and dynamic.
Read MoreStudent Government Health and Wellness Website
TechTeam worked with UChicago’s Student Government to help redesign their Health and Wellness website. The project involved creating an interactive tool for students to navigate a database of mental/physical health resources on and off campus, and making recommendations to the user about which resource is most applicable to them.
Read MoreExperimental Station Web Optimization
The Experimental Station is working to build independent cultural infrastructure on the South Side of Chicago by fostering a dynamic ecology of innovative educational and cultural programs, small business enterprises and community initiatives. TechTeam implemented a series of optimizations on Experimental Station's website to increase visibility and web traffic from paid (using Google AdWords) and unpaid (search engine) results.
Read MoreGreater Bronzeville Neighborhood Network
To aid in Greater Bronzeville Neighborhood Network’s mission to reduce poverty and violence by sharing necessary resources for members of the Greater Bronzeville Community, TechTeam created a website that hosts information on a variety of opportunities for employment and services for interested community members.
Read MoreChicago Justice Project
Chicago Justice Project has been scraping and geocoding news articles for any mention of crime in Chicago for years. They now aim to compare this data with actual crime data so viewers can assess the accuracy of crime reporting in Chicago. To help with this process, TechTeam created a website with two interactive maps; the choropleth map contains geocoded crime data and the other geocoded news articles, while the other map gives the ability to select specific types of crime. There is also functionality to generate additional data visualizations to display below the maps.
Read MoreHourVoice
HourVoice is a civically focused for-profit company that helps hourly workers rate their employers, find better ones, and more. While HourVoice already has an app, TechTeam worked on creating a proof of concept for an “Advocate Workbench” app for analytics. Our team collected data about hourly employers from external sources (such as the city of Chicago), disambiguated employers across different databases, and made a visualization platform to see this data. TechTeam also briefly worked on strategies to combat fake users on the HourVoice platform and wrote a short proposal on this topic.
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The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance
The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance is an organization focused on supporting and protecting the safety of LGBTQ youth throughout Illinois. We redesigned their website and taught them how to integrate social media into their digital strategy. Their target audience is high school and younger youth.
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Sprouting Leaders
Sprouting Leaders pairs college leaders with students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade to build peer-to-peer mentorship bonds over a college semester. We updated their WordPress website by restructuring the layout and organization of the pages. Additionally, we added the capability of including multilingual content, specifically for Spanish speakers, and better incorporated their social media accounts.
Read MoreNetwork 9 Community Resource Directory
We worked with Chicago Public Schools/Public Allies to create the an interactive site displaying resources for schools, students, and families on the South Side of Chicago. We used Derek Eder's Searchable Map Template to implement the map and it's features. The goal of the project was to create a simple and easy-to-use interface that would make the data publicly accessible.
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Fair Elections Illinois
Fair Elections Illinois is a campaign seeking to implement a small donor match program. Already active in New York, this campaign seeks to increase the impact of each individual vote and combat big money here in Chicago. Common Cause, one of the leading contributors to this campaign, enlisted our help to design and maintain an easy to use and interactive website. In addition to building the website, we helped Fair Elections develop a Social Media strategy.
Read MoreGreen Star Movement
Green Star Movement is a Chicago non-profit that works with communities to create public art around the city to revitalize urban neighborhoods. We created a new website that featured a minimalist design in order to showcase the photographs of the colorful and intricate mosaics from the completed projects. Additionally, we streamlined the application process for volunteers and the registration process for classes.
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Office of Illinois State Representative Christian Mitchell
Illinois State Representative Christian Mitchell is a lifelong Chicagoan and a UChicago grad serving the 26th District in the the General Assembly. The 26th District of Illinois stretches along the Lakefront from the Gold Coast to 91st Street. It includes some parts of communities such as the Near North Side’s Streeterville area, some parts of the Loop, Bronzeville, Hyde Park, South Shore and South Chicago area. TechTeam worked with Representative Mitchell's Office to make his web platform (no longer active) a productive hub for discussion and community-building in the 26th District.
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We the People Media
Non-profit organization We the People Media was founded to support the work of Residents' Journal and the Urban Youth International Journalism Program, programs that began in 1996 in association with the Chicago Housing Authority. Residents' Journal is a publication for public housing residents, by public housing residents that produces a wide array of journalism, from investigative reporting to community news. TechTeam updated their website developed an online archive for Residents’ Journal to make journalism more accessible to the community and redesigned the site for a cleaner feel.
Read MoreBarbara Flynn-Curry
We worked with Illinois House of Representatives Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie to revamp her social media presence. We increased her Twitter followers by 34% and her Facebook engagement by 42%. We also launched a section on her website to provide visitors with access to Chicago city services.
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