Beyond Graduation: Designing Long-Term Support Systems for Individuals Facing Federal Charges
My Role
Service Designer
Stakeholder Communications
Tools
Figma, Miro, Google Sheets, Zoom
Responsibilities
Developed project plan, developed and facilitated co-design workshops with various stakeholders, synthesized data, maintained client communications, designed visuals and outputs
Methods + Artifacts
Service Blueprint
Co-Design Workshop
Cross-channel system
Good Services Scale
Ecosystem Map
Tl;dr
Impact Summary
The Focus Forward Project struggled to track participant outcomes and sustain donor awareness after participants graduated from its 13-week pretrial diversion program. The issue wasn’t a lack of care, it was that post-graduation communication, alumni engagement, and online presense relied on ad-hoc facilitator outreach and fragmented systems across channels, causing support and visibility to fade once the program ended.
Through service blueprinting, systems mapping, co-design workshops, and transition journey analysis, I identified these breakdown points and designed an interconnected post-graduation support ecosystem focused on participant tracking, facilitator coordination, alumni engagement, and donor expansion.
Context
What is The Focus Forward Project?
The Focus Forward Project is a nonprofit that supports individuals facing federal charges through a 13-week program focused on life skills, emotional resilience, and reentry planning during the high-stress pretrial period.
The program means more than just curriculum to its participants, it's a support system, a lifeline, their newfound community.
Problem framing and objectives
A much needed program ends after graduation
Participants in the program as well as the facilitators behind it go through significant life changes in just 13 weeks. The bonds they develop during this period are incredibly meaningful and emotionally supportive. Initial insights from the client kick-off revealed two important points:
Ongoing communication becomes difficult when people enter the justice system. Staying in contact can be costly for family members. Weeks, months, and even years can pass before a sentencing hearing. This valued community is lost to the system.
Facilitators who are a part of the program care deeply about Focus Forward, though it runs almost entirely on volunteer work, which creates constraints in resources.
Given these challenges, our team defined 2 key goals:
1
Measure Long-Term Success
Develop a way to track participant outcomes during and after the program, including post-release progress and recidivism, to better understand and demonstrate impact.
2
Scale Through Funding and Expansion
Identify strategies to attract higher-value donors and expand the program to new municipalities, enabling broader reach and long-term sustainability.
How did we focus forward?
The Design Process
Phase 1
Discover & Map
Mapped the current service blueprint across all stages from pre-enrollment through post-graduation. Identified the post-graduation gap.
Phase 2
Analyze
Built a cross-channel systems map and evaluated the service using the Good Services Scale. Identified three key areas of struggle.
Phase 3
Co-Design
Ran a 75-minute virtual co-design session on April 12, 2026 with 18 participants, graduates, facilitators, and staff. Activities included a cultural probe, co-journey maps, and brainwriting.
Phase 4
Intervene & Synthesize
Developed four interventions and an ecosystem loop based on co-design outcomes and service gaps.
Phase 1. discover & map
Understanding the existing service
To understand where continuity was breaking down, we mapped the end-to-end service across:
participant actions
facilitator workflows
backstage operations
communication layers
organizational systems
Our blueprint spans the full FFP journey: Pre-Enrollment, Enrollment, Onboarding, the 13-week Program, Graduation, and Post-Graduation.
Gap Identified: Post-graduation is a missing system there is no longitudinal tracking, no outcome data, no follow-up platform.
The service effectively ends at Week 13, leaving graduates without structured support at the most critical transition point in their journey.
Service Blueprint:
scroll horizontally for full view
Phase 2. analyze
Fragmented systems across communication, tracking, and visibility
We mapped all the channels through which FFP delivers its service — including participants, staff, the website, mobile communications, print materials, on-site environments, and data systems — against each stage of the service journey.
This cross-channel analysis revealed a consistent pattern:
Strong activity and high priority in the enrollment, onboarding, and program phases, but a sharp drop-off in the post-graduation phase.
Cross Channel Blueprint:
Missing communication system across Participants, Staff, Digital Media, Data & Tracking in the Post-Graduation phase
The cross-channel map makes clear that post-graduation is not just underserved — it is entirely absent as a service phase. This is the core problem that our interventions seek to address.
Good Services Scale:
We evaluated FFP’s current service against the Good Services Scale, a standard framework for assessing service quality.
38
60
FFP total Good Services score
The three areas of greatest struggle were:
Dead ends.
The service stops at graduation with no clear continuation.
Inability to respond to change quickly.
Systems are fragmented and manual.
Not agnostic of organizational structure.
The service depends too heavily on individual facilitator initiative.
Phase 3. Participatory Design
Designing with, not for
DATE
Saturday, April 12, 2026
PLATFORM
Zoom (virtual), with Miro as collaborative whiteboard
TIME
4:30 PM – 5:45 PM (75 minutes)
PARTICIPANTS
6 current participants, 6 graduates, 6 facilitators & admin (18 total)
Co-Design Goal:
How might we better support Focus Forward Project participants through and beyond program completion — strengthening community ties, post-graduate connection, and FFP’s long-term donor and stakeholder ecosystem?
This goal was crafted to be achievable within the session time, to elicit latent insights (feelings about belonging, fear of losing community, hopes for life after graduation) rather than surface-level feedback, and to support FFP to create a service that is an ongoing relationship, not a 13-week transaction.
We explored this question through 3 main activities:
Cultural Probe
Co-Journey Maps
Brainwriting
When asked what words or feelings they associate with the program, participants consistently used three clusters of language:
The ‘thumbs up’ agreement stickers clustered most heavily around Support and Community, indicating these are the program’s most resonant emotional pillars — and the ones most at risk of being lost after graduation.
Phase 4. Intervene and Synthesize
The interconnected layers of the ecosystem
This loop explains two things:
How outcome data and graduate communication creates a self-reinforcing cycle of support and funding:
How graduate stories build public awareness and grow FFP’s funding:
Graduates opt in to post-program communication and receive ongoing support
Alumni share lived experiences, feeding insights back into the system
Facilitators track milestones and maintain communication, building impact data
Leadership, funders, and courts use this data to assess outcomes and renew funding
Result A continuous cycle where better tracking improves support, and demonstrated impact sustains funding.
Participants & graduates share authentic stories and testimonials
Public & advocates engage, increasing awareness and donations
Leadership & partners use impact reporting to attract new donors and expand reach
Result Increased visibility leads to more funding, enabling program growth and reaching more participants.
All lead to our interventions
The Service Interventions
Intervention 1
Content Creation Toolkit
Video/visual editor for social posts to highlight alumni stories and build community
Intervention 2
Facilitator Engagement Toolkit
Templates and structured check-in guidance to support consistent connection
Intervention 3
Alumni Communication Hub
Newsletter and website section to share updates and strengthen alumni visibility
intervention 1. Content Creation Toolkit
Video/visual editor for social posts to highlight alumni stories and build community
Using AI based video editing tools that help turn long videos into short format social media style videos, with captions. These can reduce the workload involved in running a social media page.
Some AI tools that can be used for generating social media friendly videos/reels:
Content & Prompt Toolkit
A set of prompts for graduates to use when creating content for FFP. Graduates pick the prompt. The "What FFP gave me" theme is the replication bridge, it's where outcomes data and program-design feedback overlap, which is rare and valuable.
Content Types
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Short video or photo featuring an alum's story, (optional) shared as a collaborated post from their own account or created using a video editing tool.
GRADUATION REELS
Instagram video reel celebrating cohort completions, edited with AI tools and auto-captioned.
PROMOTIONAL/ADVOCACY
Graphics or videos promoting awareness about the justice system, fundraising, or FFP's mission for driving action from donors.
Intervention 2. Facilitator Toolkit
Informed Consent Form for FFP to stay connected with graduates and measure long-term outcomes
At the graduation ceremony, participants choose whether they consent to ongoing contact from FFP. This ensures all follow-up is ethical and wanted.
The kit includes a written consent form for participants who may be at the Brooklyn MDC, as well as an online Google form.
This way, the FFP support system is maintained and potential probation violations are evaded.
Communication templates for facilitators to reference when reaching out to graduates
These are structured but flexible templates for context-dependent communication check-ins. Optional based on facilitator capacity and participant preference. Designed to reduce cognitive load while managing so many relationships so that even minimal contact counts.
The toolkit includes a Google doc with suggested content depending on situation, as well as instructions and suggestions for engagement.
A facilitator tracker that logs key participant information
This facilitator tracking sheet uses PACER (the federal court records system) and NYC DOC to track court outcomes and recidivism for opted-in participants.
It organizes points of contact such as pre-trial officers, lawyers, and facilitators and includes responsive logic for easy updates.
Through consolidated information and a streamlined workflow, current ad hoc outreach transforms into a lightweight system that structures outreach, reduces cognitive load, and enables long-term tracking.
Intervention 3. Alumni communication hub
A newsletter and website section to share updates and strengthen alumni visibility
The Alumni Connection Hub is a collection of resources on the FFP website including a newsletter, events, and testimonials designed to keep FFP graduates connected to the community after the program ends. It gives alumni a low-pressure way to stay in touch, access resources, and give back by mentoring current participants.
Events and participation to stay up to date
The Focus Forward Project hosts events such as graduations and more to keep in touch. Anyone visiting the hub can stay informed and stay connected.
Alumni Visibility & Community
Anyone who visits the site can stay up to date with participant and alumni stories, as well as other announcements across The Focus Forward Project.
Transition Journeys
Future thinking: analyzing how a user's behaviors and role might change
These transition journeys illustrate how individuals move through different stages of involvement over time. Each map highlights key touchpoints, moments of engagement, and the toolkit’s role in supporting stronger communication, connection, and long-term participation.
Viewer --> Donor
Volunteer --> Mentor
Graduate → Alumni → Active Contributor
This map follows the transition from viewer to donor across four key stages: awareness and interest, consideration, first donation, and recurring support.
It highlights the touchpoints users encounter throughout the journey, while showing how the toolkit supports engagement, communication, and relationship-building at each stage.
Future Service Interventions
Looking ahead: what I would do for future interventions
Hub is passive, alumni who are struggling won't self-select in. Only success stories surface leading to skewed data.
Self-reported alumni stories tell FFP what's going right, but not how often things go right across the full graduating cohort.
To answer FFP's first goal, measuring graduate outcomes with recidivism as a primary metric, the Participant Tracker (Intervention 2) needs to extend beyond facilitator outreach and connect to PACER, the federal court records system, via API or an application tool like Zapier.
This closes the loop: the Hub captures qualitative depth from the willing, and the Tracker captures quantitative outcomes across everyone.
What this requires:
PACER API / Zapier Integration
Automated periodic queries against graduate docket numbers (already collected at intake) to flag new federal filings. A PACER account, a script, and FFP staff time to validate matches.
Informed consent at graduation
Graduates sign a release authorizing FFP to track public court records for outcomes research, separate from the Hub opt-in, framed transparently as program evaluation.
Triangulation, not replacement
PACER captures only federal recidivism (not state-level, employment, or wellbeing). The Hub still matters for the human picture; the Tracker keeps FFP honest about cohort-level success.
Closing
Beyond the program.
Beyond a number.
Outcomes aren’t one-size-fits-all.
Tracking recidivism is a core goal — it's how FFP will demonstrates impact and earn trust with donors and institutions.
But the participants of the program have lived experiences that no single metric can capture. The Focus Forward Project has always been about people, not metrics.
Our interventions are designed to honor that by expanding the support and community that walks with graduates wherever they go next.
"I transformed through reform itself."
— Focus Forward Alumni