Footsteps

The Footsteps app, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is a data collection tool for one-to-one aides who provide therapeutic support to youth in the community. The app allows aides to collect data on their phone or tablet and provides reminders and feedback to increase accurate and timely progress monitoring. While Footsteps is designed for one-to-one aides working with children on the autism spectrum in classrooms, it can be used with other populations and in other settings.

 The Footsteps app offers several features designed to make behavioral data collection easier and more motivating for one-to-one aides.

Individualized Account Set-up

 The Footsteps app can be customized to meet the user’s data collection needs and select in-app notifications and graphs. Aides or their supervisors set up the app with data tracking tiles relevant to the client’s individualized education and treatment plan. Customizable elements include the client’s name, definition, and goal of behaviors or skills, as well as metrics for measuring behavior, such as frequency, duration, intensity, percentage of opportunities, and context. The supervisor can set expectations, such as the percentage of time intervals in which data should be taken. The supervisor also can set push notification features, feedback message features, and which data presentations the app generates.

Data Tracking: Behaviors and Skills 

The Footsteps app can be used to collect data on as many behaviors or skills as is relevant to the client. During data entry for a given behavior or skill, the user can record duration, frequency, intensity, percent opportunities, and context. Data tracking tiles also feature entry for time of occurrence, “Additional Notes” for narrative style notes, as well as a “Behavior Did Not Occur” button to indicate the absence of a behavior during a given interval.

Client Progress Graphs

The app offers a graphing feature for users to keep track of their client’s progress. As the aide collects data, the app generates graphs displaying the client’s behavioral trends and progress toward meeting their goals. The graphs can be created for each time frame, behavior/skill, metric, location, and context. The graphs are designed to inform team meetings and update support plans. The graphs are also accessible via the associated web platform and can be downloaded and printed or stored in a client’s electronic record.

Feedback Messages and Graphs

Upon starting a session, the app presents encouraging feedback message based on whether the user has taken data per their agency’s expectations. The app also offers a graphing feature for aides to keep track of their own progress. As an aide collects data, the app generates two different graphs. One compares the aide’s current week of data entry to the previous week coupled with an encouraging message that indicates either to maintain or improve their data entry. The other graph displays the aide’s progress toward meeting their agency’s data entry expectations coupled with either an encouraging message (e.g. “Room for Improvement”) or celebratory feedback (e.g. “You are a top performer!”).

Push Notifications

Footsteps uses push notifications to remind the user to enter data. Push notifications appear toward the end of pre-assigned intervals and remind aides to input data if they haven’t collected it during a given interval (e.g. “Hello! Just reminding you to take data for this hour!”). The app also notifies aides at the end of a week (Friday, 4pm) to check week-to-week comparison graphs: “Let’s review your data this week compared to last week.”

Summary Notes

The app offers a free form text field for aides to provide supplemental qualitative data regarding a given day’s support session.

Behavior Timer

The Footsteps app offers a timer feature so that aides can easily record the duration of a behavior.

Messaging Platform

The app features a basic messaging platform for aides to interact with supervisors.