Engineering for Good: Designing a Solution to Support Grieving Families

The loss of his son led Jason Dyke to create Carson’s Village, a non-profit organization that provides resources for grieving families across America. The personal challenges he encountered during the bereavement process strengthened his resolve to support other people dealing with the death of a loved one.

Carson’s Village was founded to assist families with everything from funeral arrangements to the more emotionally-tasking aspects of mourning; advocates within the organization walk side by side with families through the entire process and stay connected with them for about a year. The non-profit also aims to provide a “virtual village” in the form of an all-in-one platform used for fundraising, memory preservation, and information sharing.

Engineering Projects in Community Service or EPICS, as it is fondly called is a unique service learning program set up by the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Each semester, undergraduate students are exposed to a number of social good projects. They are encouraged by faculty to contribute their engineering or computer science skills to help non-profit organizations like Carson’s Village in achieving their mission.

When Carson’s Village was looking to create a tribute page to honor the families dealing with loss, a team of six Computer Science students (Evelyn Kha, Alexis Jennings, Rahul Kolla, Rajershi Day, Haoting Liu and Justin Doan) signed up to work on the project. 

The idea was to have a page that would give families access to their donations and also enable them to share images with their village of friends and extended family members. To address the challenge, the team decided to create an automated, user-friendly system that would enable family members to set up tribute pages and manage their donations independently. 

The project needs included website development, UI/UX development, database design and implementation, server design and implementation, financial transactions/processing and data security. The EPICS team utilized their programming skills and knowledge of various programming languages, including SQL for the database, JavaScript for the general workings of the website, and knowledge of additional applications, such as Docker and GitHub to help test and keep track of the project. 

According to the team, working on the project also helped them develop some soft skills, such as time management, communication, public speaking, decision making, and problem solving. Gaining the opportunity to build new skills while giving back attracted them to the EPICS program. 

“There are many reasons we wanted to join EPICS. The prime reason is because we’d be able to provide technical assistance for a good cause. EPICS is an elective credit that provides a breath of fresh air for students who have not yet had the chance to participate in a project devoted to a real organization. This experience is also a motivation. This project is important because oftentimes, non-profit organizations do not have the resources available to create their own websites and digitized systems, something that is becoming increasingly essential in this day and age. Working with a non-profit is a mutually beneficial relationship, where we can gain experience, and the organization receives the help they need.” Evelyn Kha said.

In Spring 2022, the team’s main task was to clean up the codebase (the complete source code of a software program or application), while in the summer their main focus was on website authentication. In the coming months, the team plans to implement a feature on Carson’s Village’s website that will enable visitors to make donations through an automated payment system.

“Over the course of the summer, we worked on authentication and user interface (UI) redesign on the website. The first step of authentication consisted of creating a feature that lets users create an account and login. Authentication itself is the process in which we validate the credentials of a user such that they can only access pages they’re allowed to go to. After that, we did a user interface redesign. When we started work on the project in previous semesters, we already had a functioning website. However, the look and feel of it needed an upgrade. We redesigned the website so that it would be user-friendly and more aesthetic to view. Next semester will be working on integrating an automated payment system used for donations.” Evelyn Kha added.

These improvements will go a long way to simplify the non-profit’s processes, thereby making it easier for families to not only get the help they need, but also find little triumphs in times of tragedy. 

To learn more about the team’s project, go to https://sites.utdallas.edu/epics-carsons-village/ 

You can also donate to Carson’s Village here https://carsonsvillage.org/get-involved/donate/ 

Are you a student looking to get involved in the EPICS Program? Find out more details here https://epics.utdallas.edu/