UX Case Study: Another solution to immigration
On the first day of the bootcamp at ironhack, we were assigned to our respective groups. In our group, comprising four team members, we decided to tackle the topic of Immigration.
Our brief stated:
How Might We Help migrants find information, complete tasks, and get their paperwork done to start their life in a new city.
Although this served as our initial guideline, we understood that extensive research was necessary to identify any potential blind spots and address any underlying issues in order to develop viable solutions.
That being said, once we had our brief assigned, we dove straight into the project by conducting Secondary Research. By doing so, we got to gather some key elements that could help us make our first assumptions before conducting any interviews, being:
- The language barrier
- Bureaucratic faults / Over-complications
- Housing, financial problems
- Money / Financing
Interviews
Conducting interviews is an essential part of UX design, as it allowed us to gain valuable insights into the needs, goals and behaviors of immigrants.
By conducting 5 interviews, it helped us ensure that our design decisions were based on the needs and goals of the immigrants rather than assumptions or guesses. By directly talking to them and understanding their experiences, we were able to create a mobile app that is more user-center and intuitive. Among their needs and goals, we were able to identify pain points that immigrants encounter when dealing with the migration process.
The affinity diagram and empathy map
Once we were done conducting those 5 interviews and identifying the main paint points, we were able to both organize and synthesize them thanks to the affinity diagram and the empathy map.
On the one hand, the affinity diagram allowed us to group insights and observations from the interviews into related categories.
By grouping these insights, we could better identify patterns and themes. But we didn’t stop there. We then prioritized those insights by each voting with dot stickers. This process typically involves giving each group member a set number of dot stickers to indicate their preferences. Members then place their dots on the ideas they prefer the most. This technique helped us focus on the most pressing immigrant needs and design solutions that can address them.
On the other hand, the empathy map allowed us to develop empathy for immigrants by focusing on their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in order to create more human-centered solutions.
The empathy maps helped us gain a deeper understanding of users' needs, pain points, and motivations, which same as the affinity map, helped us later on make a more effective and user-friendly design for immigrants. To do so, we had to put ourselves in their shoes, helping us better understand and relate to their experiences. We were able to make design decisions by highlighting important needs and pain points, helping us to prioritize features and functionality that meet the users' needs within our migration app.
By completing both the affinity diagram and the empathy map, our team has discovered that the three main challenges faced by migrants are:
- The difficulty of finding important documents
- The challenge of completing the required paperwork
- The additional obstacle of not being able to access these resources in their native language
Primary user persona
Creating a primary persona for an immigration app helped us create a more user-centered app by better understanding the needs, goals, and pain points of our target users.
This is Confused Carlos, a fictional representation of a user that is based on our research and user feedback. Carlos, who is originally from Castro, Chile, made the decision to relocate to Berlin in order to broaden his perspectives and achieve personal development.
As we can see in the frustrations category, he is experiencing several challenges such as struggling with the language barrier and being unable to understand German documents, feeling confused and finding it difficult to verify the accuracy of the information on websites. He is also finding it challenging to integrate into the new culture and community. Additionally, he feels that the overall experience is time-consuming and not proactive.
These frustrations helped us prioritize features that address common pain points seen in the affinity and empathy map such as language barriers, cultural differences, or the stress of navigating the immigration process.
Taking into consideration these common pain points and thanks to the persona, we officially made the decision to add crucial features to our migration app, which are to help users track the progress of their required documents, connect with other immigrants and many more.
The user’s journey map
The next step was the user’s journey map. This tool provided us with a clear and comprehensive understanding of how an immigrant would interact with our mobile app.
By mapping out each step of the user’s journey, we could identify pain points, areas of confusion and opportunities for improvement for our mobile app:
The user journey map provided insights into how they would behave when interacting with our app, with a visual representation of the user experience, making it easier for us to make some decisions in regard to the design and functionality by identifying their needs and expectations where the immigrants may become disengaged or frustrated.
How might we’s and the problem statement
How might we statements and problem statements are two critical components of the UX design process. How might we statements are used to generate ideas, while problem statements help to define the specific problem that the design team is trying to solve.
How might we statements are questions that are designed to inspire creative thinking and generate new ideas. They typically begin with the phrase “How might we…” and are open-ended in nature.
Each team member wrote three HMW statements to explore a wide range of design possibilities, meaning features that could ensure a good user experience within our mobile app. Those features revolve around all the pain points that have previously been identified in both the affinity diagram and the empathy map.
The problem statements, on the other hand, heped us define the specific problem that we are trying to solve when building our app, so that we could move on to the design part.
Ideating and prototyping
Ideating and prototyping are crucial steps in the UX design process because they helped us both generate and test ideas for solutions to the immigrant's needs and problems.
Ideation involves brainstorming and generating a wide range of ideas. This process encourages creativity and innovation, and allowed us to explore multiple solutions to problems that we’ve encountered.
In our case, we chose the Crazy 8s as our design exercise, which is often used in the early ideation phase of a project to quickly generate multiple solutions to a design problem. We were each given eight minutes to sketch out eight different design ideas. This is what we came up with:
Once we were done with our Crazy 8s and had a visual idea of what our mobile app could look like, we began our concept sketches.
When designing a flow in a prototype, it’s important to start by identifying the problem that you’re trying to solve. In our case, the main problem was not being able to access and fill in the correct documents in your native language. Once we’ve identified the problem, we started sketching out a solution by focusing on this specific feature within our app, while keeping in mind the user’s perspective and what they might want or need at each step of the flow:
Once we were done ideating, we were ready to turn our concept sketches into a low-fidelity prototype:
Thanks to our low-fidelity prototype, we were able to test them and refine ideas before investing significant time in making the mid-fidelity prototype. It reduces the risk of creating an app that doesn’t meet users’ needs and it allowed us to gather user feedback early in the design process.
When conducting the concept testing, one of the three testers felt that the home page was a bit confusing because the document feature was not showcased enough to her liking.
But overall, our testers had a good user experience, as they claim that the mobile app is both easily functional and visually pleasing:
When we were done gathering all the users’ feedback and making slight changes to our design, we were ready to turn it into a mid-fidelity prototype.
The lack of detail made it difficult to visualize our final service. By creating a mid-fidelity prototype, we added more realistic visual elements and interactions, which helped us better visualize how the app will actually look and function in the hands of users:
Our non-digital component
Our non-digital component of the project is a tour guide designed to assist immigrants.
This component could potentially provide valuable assistance to immigrants who are unfamiliar with the area and need guidance navigating their new surroundings. Additionally, it could offer opportunities for cultural exchange and community building.
Furthermore, the use of a bus as a marketing strategy could potentially increase the visibility of the brand and generate interest in both the mobile app and the tour guide. By displaying the brand on the bus, the project could create a sense of legitimacy and professionalism, which could encourage potential customers to utilize the service.
Conclusion
All in all, I faced obstacles and challenges during my first project at ironhack that helped me gain valuable knowledge and experience. Through conducting user research, designing the interface, and testing the app with users, I developed a deeper understanding of the importance of accessibility, usability, and cultural sensitivity in the design process. This experience helped me refine my skills as a UX designer and prepared me for future projects. I can also say that the teamwork was great! Effective communication, collaboration, and a positive attitude are all important aspects of a successful team!
