Immigration during COVID-19
How can we make immigration an easier task — for immigrants?
In this case study, I'll be talking about all the phases within this sprint challenge [Discover, Define up until the Develop stage].
1. DISCOVER [Research & user data]
Our challenge was presented to us on October 19th, and we were separated into groups. Every group, including our own (originally team 2, gracefully renamed as team 1) had to choose amongst a few "Wicked problems" options. All the problems were vastly broad and complex scenarios with multiple possible solutions. Our team chose to tackle the issue of UX in immigration into the United States.
How can we help migrant people find information, complete tasks and successfully get their paperwork done to start their lives in a new city?
We filled a Survey Canvas and developed a survey based on a few brainstormed issues. Here is what we filled for this first step:
From this process, we came up with questions for a Survey and an Interview which we completed using the help of Google Sheets, Google docs, Miro, and Otter.ai app. Here is the link to the survey. And here is the link to the interview questions.
Our pool was around 44 users the survey and 5 interviewees. With this we were able to gather a few insights from our quantitative data:
- The median time to complete the immigration process was about 12 months (one year);
- All our survey and 2 of our interview users were European;
- 3 of our interview users were Latinx;
- Those who finished the process within the shortest time frame immigrated through work visas and were sponsored;
- Wait time for completing the immigration process ranges from 2 months to 5 years;
- English speaking immigrants usually do not hire a lawyer. Those who do are generally paid for by their work sponsor;
- 70 % of users used the internet as their main source of information;
- 25 % of our users said the worst part of their experience was how long the process took;
From our interviews and qualitative data we could also pull some relevant points raised by our users:
"Research beforehand"
"Have patience, because it can be a long process."
"I feel like I'm not wanted here"
"Be prepared, that will take a long time"
"I wish I could have tracked my progress because I felt left in the dark for 6 months."
That also showed us some important blind spots in our process, which I will cover later in this Case Study.
2. DEFINE [Understand our user and circumstances around the immigration process]
Once we understood more about our users, we wanted to go deeper into understanding who they were, their wants, needs, goals, and internal processes. For that, we used very interesting User-Centered tools that made the direction to which turn clearer in a simple and visual way.
The first one was the Affinity Map, in which we brainstormed ideas on our own and then placed them in Miro grouping them into themes.
Our main themes were:
- Documentation
- Migration political scenario
- Costs
- User tips
- Current process steps
- Timelines
- Websites & portals
- ICE Interviews
- English
- The experience described in 1 word
Our second tool was an Empathy Map Canvas which we used to visualize unspoken sensations, impressions, pains, gains, and goals from our users.
With this information on paper, our ability to uncover our user's universe and current experience with immigration became much easier. We were ready to create our personas.
Lisa, our first user, was based on our user pool. She reflected the user we saw the most on our survey and had very similar experiences to some of the interviewees.
Our second user, Carlos, was based on our biggest blindspot: Covering Latinxs and non-English speakers. We based Carlos more on our interviews and used his persona to make sure we were not forgetting this very important user in our MVP-defining process.
From Personas, we were able to move to one of the most enlightening parts of the process, the As Is Scenario, developed by IBM. This tool created a bridge between the user concepts we ideated, and the Journey map we would develop further on.
From this tool, we were able to come up with what the user was doing, thinking, and feeling, throas ughout the process as it is today.
Finally, we got to my favorite tool, the Journey Map.
Here we identified the steps of the process, did some more research on how it went exactly, uncovered great pain points, and consequently great windows of opportunity.
From here, we were able to start funneling the process a bit more. We identified 3 Problem Statements (PS) and 3 How Might We (HMW) statements:
PS1: Lisa [a former student applying for a work visa] needs to find help on answering questions regarding immigrating to the US.
HMW1: How might we help Lisa find reliable resources to make the application process clearer?
PS2: Lisa [a former student applying for a work visa] needs to gather, organize and send her documents [both to her boss & USCIS].
HMW2: How might we make it easier for Lisa to gather, organize and send her documents, all in one place?
PS3: Lisa [a former student applying for a work visa] needs to track her application in real-time, and know what needs to be done.
HMW3: How might we help Lisa track her status in real-time?
From this, we could arrive at the final stage of the process…
3. DEVELOP [ Ideation, Moscow Method, MVP]
We once again Brainstormed ideas together and developed 3 Mindmaps, one for each Problem Statement. As in this one:
After we reproduced this process for each Problem Statement, we then moved to the Moscow Method, to delineate which ideas we Must keep, which ones we Should keep, which ones we Could keep, and which ones we Won't keep.
With this in hands, we went back, and remembered our user's biggest pain points:
- Difficulty gathering and organizing documents;
- Long wait times;
- Inability to track status;
And we arrived at the final stage of this Case study, the MVP (Minimal Viable Product).
Our MVP is a platform able to provide accurate and verified information to our users, upload, store and organize documents and make it possible for them to track their application in real time.
Well, I lied. There is more than the develop stage, we did some of the
4. Deliver [Success and Failure Metrics]
Here are some of my Takeaways:
- The platform today is confusing as is;
- There are tools out there that make it easier, but they aren’t easily reachable;
- The whole process can be made easier by focusing on a user-centered approach;
- The number of different users makes it hard to find one simple solution;
- This "Wicked problem" would need much more than sheer excitement in a 1-week design sprint;
Here is some of my Key Learnings:
- It is very important to keep your personal beliefs in check (at all times);
- It is a group effort and we grow constantly by working together;
- It's important to be humble and realize you will never have all the answers (especially on a week sprint);
- Understanding our users is the MVP of Design Sprints. If there is one thing we should try to do is that;
- We never actually know our user, but we have to keep trying (hard);
Next Steps:
- Revisit our users and their needs;
- Make a more thorough research on the present immigration scenario;
- Develop prototypes for every single feature we proposed on the MVP;
- Test those prototypes with users;
- Revisit them;
- Test again;
- Repeat the last two steps and research as needed;
- Launch a Beta version;
Knowledge Gaps:
- Our samples were small;
- Our users did not represent the current immigration scene;
- There are many different types of immigration we did not cover;
- We only talked to immigrants, no government officials, or people who did not get their immigration request accepted;
- We did not test our MVP with any users;
- We did not correlate the type of visa with immigration type;
- We did not cover special immigrants (victims of abuse, war refugees…);
- We did not cover non-English and non-Spanish speakers;
Thank you!
Please let me know what I could have done better, and where can I improve my process!
