Building a Bridge: Using Data to Create Meaningful Change

The challenge wasn't just technical. Across the country, thousands of organizations were collecting data about their prevention work in completely different ways. There was no standardized approach, no common language, and no way to see the big picture of what was working where. Prevention efforts were happening in isolation, and the data that could help scale successful programs was locked away in incompatible systems.

Even more daunting, the team at kNot Today couldn't fully articulate what they needed because the requirements would only become clear as they built it. They were asking us to construct a bridge while simultaneously designing the blueprints and discovering what the other side looked like.

Starting with Clarity, Not Code

We knew that diving straight into development would be expensive and time-consuming. Instead, we proposed starting with a six-day design sprint led by Atlas & Studio. The goal wasn't to build anything yet—it was to create a shared vision that could guide years of development work.

For nearly a week, we brought together kNot Today's team, stakeholders from partner organizations, and data scientists to wrestle with fundamental questions: What data actually matters for prevention? How do different organizations think about measuring success? What would make this useful rather than just another database?

Emma, the Executive Director from kNot Today, remembers the doubt in the room at the beginning. "We were doubtful going in that we could follow a process that would take so many diverse ideas and come up with a unified product," she recalls. But something shifted over those six days. "We began to see the product coming together. After sharing it and getting feedback from our potential users, we knew we had settled on the right direction."

That validation turned out to be worth far more than the time invested. "We've saved tens of thousands of dollars in bad decisions by taking the time up front and going through the process," Emma says.

Building for the Unknown

With a clear foundation established, we launched into development—but not in the traditional sense. The nature of this project demanded flexibility that typical development processes couldn't provide. Partner organizations were still discovering what data they could share, how their systems worked, and what questions they needed answered.

We turned to AI-powered development using Claude Code, which allowed us to structure and restructure data models as requirements evolved. This wasn't about cutting corners—it was about building a system that could adapt to reality rather than forcing reality to conform to premature technical decisions.

Rebecca, State Director, North Carolina from kNot Today describes how this approach transformed their experience: "The flexible development process has made it possible for us to work together as a team and develop a solution that meets the needs and increases the value of the end result. Knowing that we can experiment and even make mistakes without them being incredibly costly is a huge comfort as we proceed into uncharted territory to help protect kids from child sexual abuse."

The real-time development and data analysis meant we could work alongside kNot Today's team and their partners to identify patterns, normalize disparate data sets, and build tools that served actual needs rather than imagined ones. When we discovered that an organization tracked data differently than we expected, we could adjust. When new requirements emerged from conversations with stakeholders, we could incorporate them without rebuilding from scratch.

Launch and Impact

On January 21, 2026, The Bridge went live. At launch, the platform contained 36,000 data points tracking over one million children reached through prevention efforts—and that was just for the state of Indiana. The numbers tell part of the story, but the real transformation is harder to quantify: for the first time, prevention organizations could see beyond their own work to understand what was happening across communities, identify gaps in coverage, and make evidence-informed decisions about where to focus resources.

The Bridge now serves as a national infrastructure that captures data from numerous organizations, normalizes it across different stakeholder requirements, and makes prevention data actionable for organizations working to build cultures of prevention for child sexual abuse. Instead of isolated pockets of information, there's now a comprehensive view of prevention work happening across the country.

What We Learned

Looking back, three things made this project work. First, investing six days in design thinking with actual users created a foundation that has guided years of productive work. When questions arose during development, we could return to that shared vision and make decisions aligned with our original insights.

Second, embracing uncertainty as a feature rather than a bug allowed us to build something better than we could have specified upfront. The flexible, AI-powered development approach meant we could respond to the complexity of real-world data and partnerships rather than forcing everything into a rigid framework.

Third, user validation at every stage transformed the project from a technical challenge into a collaborative solution. Stakeholders who were uncertain at the beginning became excited advocates because they helped shape the outcome. They saw their needs reflected in the product because we built it with them, not for them.

The work continues. As more states come online and more organizations join The Bridge, the system adapts and grows. But the foundation built in those first six days—and the flexible approach that followed—created something that can scale to meet the need, one child, one data point, one prevention effort at a time.