Month: April 2024

New Offline App – coming soon

Posted on by Emily Lamont

When you’re out and about in the community it’s not always easy or possible to connect to the internet. This can make it challenging for those using the Live Completion feature to complete a Star on-screen using the Star Online. We know from feedback that Live Completion is a great way to help practitioners avoid data entry duplication, cut down on paperwork and reduce printing.

That’s why we’re excited to let you know that we’re working on a brand-new Offline App – which allows practitioners to complete Stars collaboratively on screen with the people they support, without needing an internet connection. The new app will be even more user-friendly and accessible, supporting practitioners to have more helpful and collaborative conversations with the people they support.

We’ve been developing the Offline App with Usertopia and QES, drawing on their expertise in research driven user experience and software development. We plan to launch the Offline App later this year.

What will the Offline App look like?

This new functionality will give organisations the option of ‘Enabling Offline Mode’. Once enabled, practitioners linked to the account will be able to download the Offline App to their device and save engagements for use offline.

A screenshot of the Collaborative Session homepage on the Offline App. It shows the Star version, Stars completed, Open actions and options for Star completion actions like complete a new Star.
Collaborative session homepage

Using the Offline App, practitioners will be able to start a ‘Collaborative Completion’ session where they can complete the Star, create Action Plans and view and compare previous Stars with the people that they support.

View and Compare Stars page
A screenshot of the Action Plan screen on the Offline App. It shows an Action Plan including the in progress actions and closed actions.
Action Plan screen

The new screens will also be used to replace the current ‘Live Completion’ function, allowing the Star to be completed using the Star Online in a more accessible and user-friendly way.

A screenshot of the Star completion screen from the Offline App. It shows a completed Star and a prompt showing a section from the Journey of Change so the reading can be finalised and discussed.
Star completion screen

A few thoughts from our research and designer partner, Usertopia:

We would like to thank everyone who took part in our research sessions and workshops over the past 12 months. It has been a delightful experience acquainting ourselves with Triangle’s expert team and engaging with a number of practitioners to learn how they are currently using the Live Completion feature of the Outcomes Star to help change lives.

We’ve woven the invaluable insights garnered from our research into the fabric of every design decision we’ve made. This has included getting under the skin of how practitioners engage with the people they support, understanding current limitations and difficulties with the current Outcomes Star, and outlining sensitive use cases with various ethical considerations leading to refinements such as one-tap screen locking.

Our latest updates enhance collaboration, interactivity and engagement, aiming to guide best practice, make the Star easier to use, and ensure safer, more productive sessions for service users. We truly believe these updates will unlock new potential for the Outcomes Star and lay a foundation for continuous improvement long into the future.

– Usertopia

We are really excited about this development and plan to launch it later this year.

First Look: Register to Try the New Offline App!​

If you already use Star Online and would like to get a first look and the chance to feed back on the Offline App before launch, please register your interest below.

Register your interest

If you have any requests, or any questions about the Offline App or the Star Online, please contact us on info@triangleconsulting.co.uk.

5 Tips for using Star Data in your Reports and Evaluations

Posted on by Juliet Kemp

April is here and you may be thinking about putting together project evaluations or preparing your Trustee Annual Report and considering how you demonstrate the impact of your services.

Now is an ideal time to think about using your Outcomes Stars data. Even if you haven’t been using Outcomes Stars for long and don’t have lots of review Stars, read on… you can still use Star data to evidence the need for your service.

In this article we have gathered some tips and ideas to help you use Star data in your annual reports.

Use Star Charts to bring case studies alive

You probably have lots of stories of amazing personal change achieved by people you support, and already include individual case studies in your annual reporting. You can illustrate this by adding a Star Chart showing someone’s first and last/latest Star readings.

This is a great way to show the changes that have been made. Along with the narrative in your case study, a Star Chart will help you tell the story of how the support provided facilitated progress on the Journey of Change in relevant outcome areas.

TOP TIP

If you don’t use Star Online why not use a photo of your hand-plotted Star Chart image?​

Paula's Star
A Star Chart showing someone’s first and last/latest Star readings

Taking a snapshot view

Snapshot reports look at Outcomes Stars completed across a cohort of people at a particular point in their support. A great way of using a Snapshot report is to look at everyones’ first Stars to see how the readings are distributed across the Journey of Change in each outcome area (by working out the percentage of people with readings at each Stage, in each outcome area). This will give you a profile of the needs people have when they first start support.

TOP TIP

Use this information to illustrate why you deliver the kind of interventions that you do – this can show that your service is evidence led and is focusing resources where they are needed most.

A snapshot report

Example of how an organisation may use a Snapshot (SS) report:

We use the Wellbeing Star™ to help us identify people’s needs when they start the three-month social prescribing programme. Over 60% of our programme participants are either not yet thinking about or finding out about how they could improve their lifestyle, so our programme focuses on one to one and small group work to help people open up about their lifestyle and consider the impact this might have on their existing health conditions.

Illustrating the distance travelled

Outcomes Stars are designed to show the progress made by the people you support, and it is really satisfying to be able to collate Star readings to show this progress across a service or organisation. If enough people have completed two or more Stars, readings can be collated for a service or organisation to capture distance travelled and demonstrate the percentage of people that have moved forward, maintained or dropped back over the course of a year.

How much progress are people making in each outcome area?
A distance travelled (DT) report

In your report narrative, you might want discuss progress made across all outcome areas around the Star or you might prefer to focus your narrative on a few areas that your service targets through your interventions, by selecting a few headline figures from the data in the report.

Example of adding narrative to a Distance Travelled (DT) report:

As evidenced by our use of the Well-being Star™, which we complete with participants on our social prescribing programme, 80% of participants made positive change in the area Money, following our successful collaboration with our local CAB debt and benefits service – this is a big improvement from the previous year, where Money was the area in which we saw significant need (people were at the lowest two stages of the Journey of Change scale) and we saw the least positive change.

TOP TIP

Explain what your distance-travelled data is showing you, the learnings that have been taken from this and include plans for service delivery going forward based on the findings.

Don’t be afraid to report on people dropping back, maintaining or acknowledging change that isn’t as strong as you would like. Some areas do take longer to make positive change or depend on resources that aren’t available or are out of the control of your service. Reporting on this will show to stakeholders that you understand the data you are getting from Outcomes Stars and that you use it to reflect on your provision and the wider context you work in.

For example:

Although we continue to see less positive change in the outcome area Where you live on the Wellbeing Star™, this is an area where it is often difficult to achieve results within the 3-month programme e.g. referrals to the Council’s aids and adaptation team for an assessment typically take about 10 weeks.

TOP TIP

When using Outcomes Stars to evidence your impact, use the correct title of the Star you use and use the ™ to show you are using a recognised evidence-based Outcomes measurement tool.

Further support

Triangle is here to support you to make the most from your Star data. If you need any support or have any questions, get in touch with your main point of contact at Triangle.

We run regular webinars to help you get the most from your Star data and use the Star Online report dashboards. You can book a slot and find out more information about our webinars below.

Book a Webinar

Share your practice with Triangle

We would love to see examples of where you have used your Outcomes Stars data to evidence your impact or where you have learnt something interesting – please get in touch to share your experience of using Star data.