An interactive map of where our social work students do their field placements. Built so the Field Education team can see coverage, history, and gaps in seconds instead of scrolling a 400‑row spreadsheet. Fully AI‑programmed with Claude Opus 5.5.
Audience: Field Education staff and program leadership (BSW, MSW on campus, and MSW Exclusively Online)
Scale: 400+ site records across 330+ agencies; 305 mapped 2026‑27 student placements
Reach: 46 New York counties, plus 16 areas in other states and Canada
History: Every site’s most recent hosting year, from 2019‑20 through 2026‑27
Format: Single‑page interactive web map; works on desktop and phone, light and dark mode
Status: Live internal tool, shared by link with the team
My role: Product owner and designer. Scoped the problem with the Field Education team · directed how the two source sheets were cleaned and matched · made every design and interaction call · tested the result against the source data
How it was built: Fully AI‑programmed. Claude Opus 5.5 wrote 100% of the code from my direction; I did not write any of it. My part was the brief, the iterations, and the judgment calls on what the team actually needed.
Tools: Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) as the programmer · Google Sheets (field site sheet + placement roster) · D3.js and TopoJSON for the map · Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface
A one‑screen map of New York (and beyond) that shades each county by how many field sites it holds. Flip one switch and it shows where this year’s students are actually placed instead. Click any county to see its sites, addresses, which programs each one hosts, and when it last took a student.
Two lenses: Sites (every agency we’ve worked with) or 2026‑27 students (who is placed where right now)
Two views: County shading for the big picture, or Hotspots to see clusters
Time filter: A small bar chart of hosting years doubles as the filter, so you can isolate sites that haven’t hosted since 2022, for example
Student filters: Program (on campus vs. online), enrollment (full time, part time, part time summer/fall), and placement type (traditional vs. employment based)
The Field Education team asked for a clearer view of our placement network. That knowledge lived in a long spreadsheet: hundreds of rows of agencies, addresses, and hosting years. The data was all there, but questions like “where are we thin?” or “which sites have gone quiet?” took real digging to answer. With the online MSW placing students across the state and beyond, the geography got harder to hold in your head.
The map turns that sheet into a job aid. It surfaces patterns at a glance: Broome County alone holds 121 site records and 146 of this year’s 305 mapped placements, while 16 New York counties have no sites at all.
Users can:
Locate placement options near a student in a few clicks, by county or region.
Spot dormant partnerships: sites that hosted in past years but not recently, ready for re‑engagement.
Target outreach to counties with no sites, especially where online students live.
County choropleth and hotspot views, with pan and zoom
One‑click region jumps: Southern Tier, Central & Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley & Capital, NYC & Long Island, and Across the U.S.
Hosting‑year histogram that also works as a multi‑select filter
Live stat tiles that update with every filter
County detail panel: each site’s address, programs hosted (BSW, MSW 1, MSW 2), and last year hosted
Ranked list of the counties with the most sites or students
“Counties with no sites” list, flagged as possible outreach targets; click one to fly to it
Separate lists for out‑of‑state sites and remote or multi‑location sites, so nothing quietly disappears
“About this map” note that spells out data sources and exactly what was left off
Accessible, readable UI: high‑legibility type, keyboard focus states, reduced‑motion support, and dark mode
Two sources that don’t line up: The site sheet and the student roster don’t share a clean key. I matched them by agency and listed what couldn’t be matched (64 placements at 54 agencies, plus 10 roster rows with no agency yet) instead of guessing.
Confidential sites: Some agencies, like domestic violence programs, can’t show an address. Those are withheld, and every dot sits at its ZIP code’s center rather than a street address.
Sites without one location: Remote and multi‑site programs are counted in the totals but listed separately rather than pinned somewhere misleading.
Student data covers one year only: In the students lens, the year filter locks to 2026‑27 and says why, so no one reads an empty year as zero placements.
Busy staff, not analysts: One screen, plain‑language labels, and a legend that always matches the current view. No training needed.
Today: Live for the Field Education team, who requested it, for the 2026‑27 placement cycle. Kept internal because it runs on internal placement data.
Early signals:
The team really liked it and found it a useful way to see the placement network
It sparked a new project: we’re now discussing a student‑facing version, so students can visually explore placement sites themselves
Next: Scope the student‑facing version (public‑safe data only), refresh from the source sheets each cycle, and add site capacity by program.
