Safe2Pass
"User research and Ideation for a native mobile app that works as an immigration assistant for those seeking to come into the US legally"
Challenge: How Might We help migrant people find the information, complete the tasks required by US customs (example: get vaccinations, and successfully get their paperwork done to start their new life in the United States?
My Role: Research, Ideation Sketching, Mid fidelity Wire-framing and Prototyping
My Client: Safe2Pass (fictional)
Timeline: 3 weeks
Stage 1. Discovery
Early Assumptions
To begin the stage of discovery we needed somewhat of a starting point, for this I took my own experience immigrating to the US and those of friends and family members... some of my early assumptions were:
- Filling out the paperwork can be complex and challenging to understand.
- It is difficult to obtain clear information about individual processes.
- The process can take a lot of time and money, especially if lawyers get involved.
- Streamlining the delivery of information will help users.
- By improving customer service or support, it will make the process easier to understand to users.
- there is very little feedback from USCIS on the status of their case.
Survey
Now thanks to our early assumptions we were able to create a survey with hopes of understanding and empathizing better with our users. We got a total of 64 responses.
Some of our biggest insights were:
- 90.6% of the people who filled our survey were involved or knew someone who was involved in the immigration process.
- 50.8% of the people who filled our survey obtained information about their process directly from their immigration Lawyer.
- 44.1% of users obtained such information directly from the immigration services offices.
- 50.8% of the people who filled our survey are “somewhat satisfied” with the information found on official websites.
Interviews
After collecting the biggest takeaways of the survey, we were left with some room and points to explore; wanting to dig deeper in order to empathize with users and have a bigger comprehension of the problem at hand, our next step was to interview some of the kind people that answered the survey and even an Immigration Paralegal that gave us insight of how things work from the inside.
Because of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic, we went ahead and proceeded to do virtual interviews using Zoom, we ran a total of 5 interviews that lasted between 20-to-30 minutes each. The interview questions asked were designed to further explore some of the insight we got with our survey.
Affinity Diagram
To end the discovery stage, we went ahead with our interview findings and proceeded to group them in an Affinity Diagram to look for similarities that users may have experienced regarding this topic:
Stage 2. Define
How Might We Statements
To start defining our problem, we began by creating some “how might we statements” based on the uncover user needs found on the discovery stage:
- How might we help foreign working professionals find information about their immigration process and fill their paperwork as easy and stress-free as possible?
- How might we help foreign working professionals keep track of their immigration process and provide an updated timeline to help them understand the stages of their case?
- How might we help foreign working professionals obtain help throughout the process when they have concerns and doubts filling out forms or with any kind of information related to their case?
- How might we help foreign working professionals prepare for their interviews as concise and stress-free as possible?
User Personas
We came to the conclusion that we needed not one, but in fact, two user personas. As our discovery stage gave us insight into two totally different types of people experiencing similar, but not the same problem.
Developing personas helped us avoid designing generic solutions or focusing on too broad audiences, by empathizing with fictional characters that are modeled on our real discovery data
User Journey
A User Journey Map describes the stages of a user’s experience with a product, service, or environment. In this case, we mapped our main persona’s current journey on her immigration process to obtain a working visa. The User Journey helped us identify pain points, which we used to identify opportunities to improve Sassy Selena’s experience. High points were also visible along the journey. Opportunities, or moments where the user could potentially interact with our solution, were also visually expressed.
Problem Statement
To conclude the Defining stage, it was finally time to define our main Problem Statements. They are important because they define the project’s main objective and the challenge to be solved:
“Foreign working professionals need to find a way to look for information and requirements about their immigration process as easy as possible because finding the data can be stressful, overcomplicated, and hard to understand.”
Stage 3. Ideation
With the problem defined and a clear idea of who our users are (their frustrations, goals, and motivations), now it was finally time to ideate our possible solution.
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Brainstorming and Mind-Mapping
Using Ideas we develop during a really long brainstorming session, we organized these ideas using a mind map and kept the ones that will help us achieve our goal. We decided that some of the features we had to focus our attention to include in the immigration app are: forums, help from customer service, tools to keep track of their case, and easy access to information.
Sketches
Now that we have a solid concept of what was needed and how could we provide it, it was finally time to start sketching our solution:
Stage 4. Prototype
Mid-Fidelity Prototype With our concepts done, we moved to our Mid-fidelity wireframe that we decided to prototype using Invision, please feel free to check the prototype
here
Stage 5. Validate
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
After prototyping our possible solution, it was time to try it out. We live test it on zoom with a total of 10 users... Our test was as following: we do a small introduction about what the app is all about, then we requested the user to not think to much about it and just try to fulfill the following tasks as they see fit, we observe how the users interact with our prototype and depending on the interactions (both positive and negative) we ask them questions to understand their process and how they think.
Base on this feedback we came to the following conclusions:
- Before you could access the contact / customer service tab by clicking the fourth icon on the bottom menu from left to right. By testing we realize that 7 out of 10 users identify this icon and placement as the one you would use for a forum.
- 9/10 users were able to find and select their immigration case without problems
- 8 / 10 users could not find the forum option that we had placed on the Nav-bar menu
Solutions Based On Testing
Some of the changes we made after our first prototype were the following:
- We changed the position of the forum, and we actually place it where the contact info use to be (fourth position left to right on the bottom menu)
- We added a floating button to most features that when clicked will allow you to contact customer service
Next Steps
Aside from the never ending process of testing and iterating, some next steps are:
- Define UI colors and elements and create a high-Fidelity Prototype
- Look for extra insights with the help of a legal immigration team
- Add more cases and specify the actual requirements for each one
A special thank you to Virginia Colina for her Insights as an Immigration Paralegal, to my partner in this project: Stephanie Abanto and thank you for reading!
