CaseCompass: Designing Sustainable, Community-Led Socio-Technical Systems for Gender-Based Violence Support Work

Paper Title

CaseCompass: Designing Sustainable, Community-Led Socio-Technical Systems for Gender-Based Violence Support Work

Publication Info

• Topic area: Socio-technical system design for gender-based violence support in resource-constrained NGOs.
• Keywords: Case management systems, gender-based violence, forced marriage, feminist HCI, social justice, community-led design, sustainability, infrastructural care, participatory design, NGOs.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing case management systems (CMSs) fail to support the narrative, relational, and time-sensitive nature of frontline support work in third-sector organizations (TSOs). They are often rigid, poorly aligned with workflows, and require external technical support, which resource-constrained organizations cannot sustain.
• Significance: TSOs play a critical role in addressing forced marriage and gender-based violence, yet their ability to provide effective support is hindered by inadequate tools. This impacts case continuity, efficiency, and the emotional well-being of staff and clients.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights systemic misfits in CMSs, the need for participatory design, and the importance of sustainability in socio-technical systems. However, existing approaches often fail to address the structural inequities and care deficits faced by TSOs, leaving gaps in long-term usability and organizational independence.

Solution

• Proposed approach: CaseCompass, a digital case management system co-created with the Competence Center against Forced Marriages (CoCFM) in Switzerland, designed to align with the NGO’s workflows and priorities through a community-led, care-centered approach.
• Novelty:
  1. A detailed case study of community-led design, development, and deployment of a CMS tailored to a small, resource-constrained NGO.
  2. Practical strategies for structuring participation under time, safety, and resource constraints.
  3. A framework for sustainability as an act of care and justice, ensuring long-term organizational independence.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted workshops to surface needs, translate them into design requirements, and validate prototypes.
  • Designed a lightweight, web-based system with features like flexible documentation, integrated search, and in-house configurability.
  • Emphasized sustainability through phased rollouts, user manuals, and internal capacity-building.
  • Evaluated the system through usability testing, role-play scenarios, and a two-week real-world deployment.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • CaseCompass supports flexible, real-time documentation, tagging, and search functionalities, enabling counselors to manage fragmented information and track case histories.
  • Advisors described the system as intuitive, time-saving, and aligned with their workflows, with features like tagging and coding particularly praised.
  • Minor issues (e.g., slow loading times, date formatting inconsistencies) were identified and addressed.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Improved alignment with narrative and relational practices compared to rigid, form-based CMSs.
  • Enhanced usability and configurability, reducing reliance on external technical support.
  • Streamlined case retrieval and reporting, saving time and improving coherence.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Conducted iterative usability workshops and a two-week diary study with two advisors.
  • Advisors reported quick adaptation, ease of use, and integration into daily workflows.
  • Evaluation included staggered rollout and in-house technical support to mitigate risks.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited implementation of planned features (e.g., case-wide thematic overviews).
  • Evaluation focused on early usability rather than long-term efficiency or performance.
  • Future work includes broader rollout, additional feature development, and further refinement based on user feedback.

Summary

This paper presents the design, development, and deployment of CaseCompass, a community-led case management system tailored to the needs of a small NGO addressing forced marriages in Switzerland. By centering care, sustainability, and organizational independence, the system addresses key limitations of existing CMSs, providing flexible documentation, integrated search, and in-house configurability. Evaluation showed that CaseCompass aligns well with the NGO’s workflows and enhances case management efficiency. The study highlights the importance of care-centered participation and sustainability as justice-oriented commitments, offering a pathway for designing long-lived socio-technical systems for resource-constrained TSOs.