Helping immigrants adjust to their new countries
The Problem: The difficulty in moving to a new country and navigating the bureaucracies of these new countries.
The Solution: An app that helps you not just navigate what is required for your visa but also helps you meet people in the new country you have moved to.
Role/Timeframe
UX Designer and Researcher
Two-week sprint
200+ hours
Process
Research & Synthesis: Surveys, interviews, affinity mapping & user personas
Ideation & Delivery: Building a solution, Ideation sessions
Tools
Miro
Figma
Quick Pivots
At first, I wanted to base this strictly in Chile and focused solely on the Departamento de Extranjería
I quickly realized that I did not have sufficient enough data in order to move my project to the next step
Because of this, I pivoted my project to anyone who has moved to a new country as an adult.
The survey
In order to learn people’s experiences moving to a new country. I set up a survey asking 9 questions and received 33 responses from people all over the world. The survey was set in both English and Spanish. In order to find subjects for the survey I used resources like social media groups dedicated to resources for people moving to new countries along with friends and acquaintances who have relocated to new countries. With all this new data I was ready to move on to user interviews
The survey revealed some very fascinating results on the mindmap.
The user interviews were conducted around how users adjusted to moving to new countries. The subjects covered were things like adjusting to new cultures, language barriers, and dealing with government bureaucracies
Quotes from the user interviews
“I developed a sickness dealing with the Visa bureaucracy”
-Meli, moved from Chile to Germany
“There is no communication between agencies you can go to PDI with one thing and Extranjeria will say something else”
-Camile, moved from the USA to Chile
“There was no work in Palestine, everything is taxed and goes to Israel, in Jordan, they prioritize work for Jordanians but I am equal in the UAE”
— Samid, moved from Palestine to Jordan and then to the UAE
“One of my biggest shocks was you have to drive everywhere”
-Vicente, moved from Chile to the USA
“The Chilean immigration system is just so overwhelmed it seems as if they just gave up and don’t care anymore”
-Hassan, moved from Syria to the USA to Syria
Affinity Mapping the data
Visa Issues
Cultural Issues
Language Issues
Creating the user persona:
Due to the incredibly diverse range of people who took my user survey and whom I interviewed it was very difficult to condense it down to one single user persona. There were people who moved from the “Global North” to the “Global South” and vice versa, along with people moving from countries like the USA to New Zealand and people moving from countries like Venezuela to Ecuador. Eventually, I condensed many of the common experiences they all shared such as not knowing people and dealing with government bureaucracies. With all of this condensed together, I created our user persona, Alex de Santa.
Meet Alex
Creating VisaMax
Through our ideation sessions, we realized that the quickest way to solve most of our user’s problems is to have a friend help them out. This led to the idea that this would be a way to meet new people.
How might we
How might help Alex adjust to a new culture and language?
How might we help Alex navigate the systems of the country he is moving to?
How might we make the lives of Alex and other immigrants easier?
MVP Features
Visa Help:
Set up the country you are moving to
Look up what kind of Visa you need
Visamax will show you the exact type of paperwork you need
Progress bar to show you where you are in obtaining your visa
Meeting people:
A feature that helps you meet both other foreigners and locals
Has various types of interests for people moving to a new country (athletics, arts, etc)
Events in the city they moved to catered to those interests
Task Flows
Task Flow 1 is about helping Alex get their Colombian temporary work visa
Task Flow 2 is about helping Alex find ways to meet new people in Colombia
User Flows
Sketched Wireframes
Blocker: I have had terrible handwriting my entire life so I had to pivot to making each sketch frame on a single piece of paper each
User Testing the Sketch prototypes
While testing the sketch prototypes the user was able to complete the goals of the user flows in under 4 minutes. Users were assigned two tasks. To get to the page instructing them on how to get a temporary work visa and another user goal of joining a group bike ride in Medellin.
Lo-fi Prototype
High Fidelity Screens
Welcome Screen
Choose your city screen
Main types of visas screen
Types of events screen
Create an account screen
Home screen
Migrante visas screen
Types of biking events screen
Create a profile screen
Profile screen
Requirements for M-5 visa screen
Confirmation screen
High Fidelity User Testing
The final product
Takeaways
This was the first time I have ever done a major UX project so I spent a lot of time doing trial and error and experimenting with Figma
Allow room for error
Due dates will come faster than you think
Let the research lead