A human centered design study how to improve educational experiences for immigrants, especially students, the end goal was how to make migration welcoming and safe for students.
Roles & Responsibilities
UX Research :Research, Documenting, Testing.
Design : Service Design Lead
Project Context
Jan - Apr 2022
Team : Emmy Zhang, Hui Huang Guan
Tools Used
Figma
Notion
Miro
I read a blog from IDEO.org once and it was inspiring, the humanitarian work they were doing in various sectors was great and I wanted to get involved somehow. And coincidentally it was the moment Emmy Zhang, who I met on LinkedIn suggested we do a course from IDEO on human centred design principles, I instantly agreed, and as part of the course work there we had to address a challenge. Along with another person, Hui Huang Guan, we decided to chose this challenge for our coursework and addressed it, as it resonated with us deeply.
Immigration is hard and it is prevalent, moving to a new country to begin a new life is not a simple task, it requires a lot of bravery and preparation . It is not just changing your place, it is changing your entire life and lifestyle. The problem we chose addresses the difficulties that immigrants face in a new country, beginning from access to the basic public services to job opportunities and social circles, everything needs to be done again.
The solution to these all is educating them on these. Educating Immigrants on Various Life Aspects, Educating them on how toA bridge the Language Barrier and teaching them various things and guidances help them acquire skills and information to adapt to their new environments so that they can lead a happy life in their new countries
Looking at the problem, you’ll understand it is a very broad one and addressing such a large problem was difficult, especially the research and testing. We followed the human centred design principles, and once I started working on the project along a year after the first schedule, it was those principles that helped me continue just where we had left off. I relied heavily on the design principles and case studies at ideo.org to guide me. The work they do is inspiring and empowering.
Immigrants is a very broad term, they vary on numerous factors from country, ethnicity, language to age, gender and reasons, there are numerous types of immigrants. And we understood that it would be futile to address the entire audience that fall under immigrants. We had to scale it down and consider any one specific user group, and decided we could broaden our perspectives later.
After much deliberation we decided upon the population who migrated from countries whose primary medium of communication was not English. The reasons were both personal and logical, logical being these were the people who faced more hardships and we wanted to make it better for them. While this reduced the uncertainty a lot, it did not make the problem any smaller.
We followed the principles Human Centred Design and this study is written similarly
We dedicated time to deeply comprehend the problem and its impact on people. By empathizing with users, including two immigrants among us, we explored their hopes, needs, and frustrations. Our goal was exhaustive understanding, employing diverse research methods to connect with users and gain insights.
This phase involved talking to people who have been through the process of immigration, our suitable audience included people who satisfied the following.
Having migrated to another country and have lived there for a minimum of 5 years.
Having migrated to another country and have lived there for a minimum of 2 years
And people who have recently migrated to a new country ( 6 months or less)
We did not differentiate while recruiting, but during the interviews we divided them based on their age, employment status, gender and if they were a student. This was necessary for us to understand the complete circle with no edges left.
The insights we received were interesting.
We talked to over 15 individuals who migrated from countries like china and India to other countries, each had a different story and a different reason and everyone had faced many hardships in their initial days.
During this phase, we consulted experts with immigration experience, engaging with an immigration agency in Kerala, India. The Managing Director, overseeing 500+ immigrations, shared insights on the challenges faced by migrating families, their solutions, and valuable advice for those considering migration. The interview yielded valuable insights for our project:
Immigration for people over 35 is hard, due to them being less inclined to adapt.
Immigrants who know someone on the other side always find it easy to migrate
In this method, we immersed ourselves in the perspective of our target users. Emmy spent a day with a recently immigrated family from China to California, revealing valuable insights. The family heavily relied on the one English speaker among them for daily tasks. Limited social connections in the neighborhood, language barriers, and the inability to afford adult English classes created challenges.
The children struggled to make friends due to the language barrier. Despite acquaintances, they hesitated to seek help, relying on the internet for advice. Emmy's anecdotes provided revealing and enlightening insights for our project.
In this research phase, we sought a comparable context by exploring the experiences of exchange students. Engaging with a few exchange students provided a contrasting yet insightful perspective. Unlike immigrants, exchange students perceived their challenges as temporary, lacking a sense of finality. Language barriers were present, but the students exhibited a quick ability to learn, although accents remained challenging. Employment issues were also identified, shedding light on the distinctive aspects of this user group's experience.
The insights we received so far and the different stories we heard got us to the conclusion that students faced greater difficulties mentally and emotionally due to migration. I have not spoken about this in the above sections, so as to consolidate everything here.
We sat and brainstormed a few more questions, this time aimed at immigrated children and had interviews with them. This was the most rewarding activity in all of inspiration
The insights we received from this phase essentially changed the entire direction of the study.
We spoke to over 30 people and spent more than 20 hours talking to people, thus ended our ideation phase with tons of insights that needed refining
This is where we analysed all our insights and turn them into idea. We had a ton of insights that needed refining and the first thing we did was clustering into themes.
We had 3 major clusters, one for language barriers, one to access resources and another for problems that included social circles and general life satisfaction. You can see them below
Then we started ideating, we did lots and lots of brainstorming, jotting down everything that each of us felt would be helpful to address the problem. As we went further, addressing all sectors of users was becoming hectic. We would think of a feature or an idea, it would be applicable to one set of audience, but not everyone. So we decided that it would be best to narrow down the audience even more.
We chose to address students who had migrated from countries where English in not a mode of communication, this correlated with us as we were students and as we also had faced some of the mentioned problems.
This decision was a turning point in our study, all the ideas were put down, it was a lot of brainstorming, we thought of various mobile app ideas to help solve these problems, we even went as far as building the prototype of a language learning app with community encouragement and submitted it to complete the course.
But I felt that applications were not the solution for this, there were numerous other language learning applications that could be used if users wanted something else was needed. Unfortunately Emmy and Hui Huang could not continue further because their graduation was nearing and I decided to work on this alone.
IDEO had implemented numerous service design projects and I had always wanted to work on one, I decided to implement on service design solution for this problem, especially to address the problems students were facing.
It was not easy, I spoke to 30 students, conducted various activities and understood what they went through to figure out how to prevent it. And finally, after 3 months of work I ended up at a programme that could be implemented for immigrant students at their schools or universities
Gaining such valuable insights from the research , I delved into turning those insights into features. I began with How Might We questions.
Problem : How might we improve educational experiences for immigrant students and address the problems they faced in networking, financial sustenance and communication.
Solution: Members of a club or the management could use the following guide to conduct sessions and workshops in colleges and schools to facilitate an easy settlement of newly migrated students
