Project case study

Align9

For a University of Tennessee honors-course team project, I built Align9 to help people find local services and give staff a practical way to keep the information current. Our team shaped the direction together through research and feedback.

My role: I built the application. Our team worked together on user research, feedback and understanding the direction.

Watch the interactive walkthrough

How it works

Choose a county and need

Resource filters narrow the list to a useful starting point.

Structured resource records carry county and service fields. The interface filters those fields rather than asking an AI to invent a referral.

Find a useful referral

A result shows where to go and how to make contact.

Published records supply the contact and service information. Held records stay out of the public list until their details are resolved.

Take the next step

Call and directions actions connect browsing to action.

The event route validates the request origin, event type and identifiers before forwarding an anonymous action record. Intake answers are not analytics fields.

Keep resources current

Staff can review a correction at the source.

The staff Sheet workflow maintains published resource data. Changes need source checks; an edited row is not automatic proof of availability.

Make the next step easier to find.

I built Align9 for our University of Tennessee honors-course project. Our team worked together on user research, feedback and understanding what the experience needed to do. The application connects public resource navigation with a staff maintenance workflow: visitors can narrow resources by county and need, inspect a referral, and find its contact or directions. Staff can correct the resource records without rebuilding the website.

Focus: Next.js, typed resource records, staff Sheets and validated event routes
Status: Supervised pilot; service and handoff validation ongoing

How it works

Typed resource records drive the county and service filters. The staff Sheet supports maintenance, while a validated event route records anonymous actions separately from private intake. Published and held resources remain distinct.

A decision that mattered

I kept resource browsing separate from private intake. A click on directions is an action, not evidence that someone received a service. Conflicting or unverified resource details should be held for review instead of presented as reliable just to make the directory larger.

What comes next

The current work is a supervised pilot. The next step is staff and visitor feedback, physical-device checks and a clear long-term maintenance handoff.