Who are Birmingham Youth Service?
Birmingham Youth Service allows dedicated youth centres and youth workers to stand together to support young people against hardships and discrimination.
We were approached by Birmingham Youth Service to create a Mobile Application providing young people with a voice; where their opinion matters to battle discrimination and shape future projects in Birmingham.
This also allowed youth workers to gain a much deeper insight into the troubles of young people today and the hardships they may face.
About the BYS Youthbox App
The YouthBox Application addresses key topics via Surveys and questionnaires for young people. The backend system has a multitude of features including:
- Custom built survey and detailed response system
- Video and Audio recording support
- Cached survey submissions and survey status
- GEO Data (With permission)
- PWA Mode (Application Mode)
Custom built survey and detailed response system
The survey system is built to allow youth workers to set up a new survey of any context and create questions with a range of inputs and page sections.
Each question within a survey has further reporting and detailed insight.
Video and Audio recording support
Questions can also require a video or audio response to be submitted allowing users to engage with the questionnaire via an android or iphone device (and browser) to record media as a response.
Cached survey submissions and survey status
When users submit a survey response it is automatically cached and saved to the device.
These response submission attempts were housed on the Apps home page with a status. Any submissions which were not synced at the time of recording would be re-synced when wifi was available. This was increasingly helpful in the event any responses were taken without connection to the Internet meaning the data wouldn’t need to be completed as a new entry.
GEO Data
When starting a survey, YouthBox may also ask for your permission and request to use your Geo location data. - This will then be sent with every survey response.
If users decline this request this permission is denied and their selection is saved and will not be asked again.
Users can clear and approve this by clearing their selected permission in their browser and the app will ask again upon entering a survey.
This key functionality plays a deeper part of the reporting on statistics and feedback to bring together patterns in responses for the BYS team to provide to local communities.
PWA Mode
YouthBox is a Progressive Web App, which means it can be used seamlessly as a mobile application and a website. It is made to be device agnostic and will work anywhere at any time!
One major benefit of being a PWA is that the app is fully functional even when offline.
YouthBox allows surveys to be re-submitted on the home page if any surveys were attempted to be submitted when the device was not connected to the internet.
Reports System
YouthBox also comes with a fully detailed report system for youth workers that allows them to get a much deeper understanding.
This also comes with a bunch of extremely useful features such as:
- Audio Transcriptions View Individual Submissions & Map View of Submissions
- Audio Transcriptions Report Display Types
- Audio Transcriptions
View Individual Submissions & Map view
Youth workers are able to see an individual’s responses to all of the questions for a given survey.
They are also able to see a map view of every submission based on Geo data.
Report Display Types
Youth Workers are able to set up a report for a particular survey and they’re able to select the type of report they would like to see such as a number scale/graph or pie chart.
Enhanced Reporting - Audio Transcribing
The report system also comes with an audio transcribe system where youth workers are able to see transcribed versions of an audio response, they’re also able to search for any particular words they may occur during an audio response.
Features we would like to implement:
A feature we'd like to implement in the future is a Light / Dark Mode Toggle (+ Default device option) as this is becoming increasing popular by all apps as seen from latest device releases.
