Designing a Product, from UX to Web Design — Stronger Together

Context

Stronger Together helps its users to build a community where refugees and migrants can find the help they need, but also friends to chat and hang out with, to learn more about the city and make it their home.

The UNHCR defines a refugee as an individual who has been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war, or violence. In 2015, over 65 million people were refugees worldwide and that number is continually rising. There are now more refugees than at any other time in human history, which means there is a great need for applications that can help them integrate into their new home countries smoothly.

As the team of Stronger Together, we researched the panorama of migration in Europe and focalized it on Berlin, Germany. We performed interviews and surveys with migrants and refugees to understand their needs, goals and, pain points. And we performed benchmarking research among different refugee apps, to develop our own app based on the findings.

Problem Statement: Recently arrived refugees and migrants, are often at a loss and feel isolated when they need to start a new life in Berlin. With an app, they will be able to connect with local people and other refugees and migrants who can help them discover the city, and build a community.

The Team

Our work team was divided into three areas: User Experience, Data Science, and Web Development, and we worked under the guidance of a mentor, who is an expert in the field.

User Experience:

• Pablo U: UI Designer
• Daniela Mesa Cardona: UX Researcher, Writer and Designer, advisor on UI Design

I was the UX Designer and UI Advisor. Not only did I take care of the User Research, but also, worked on the Information architecture, the user flow, the user journey, and the Lo-Fidelity and High-Fidelity Wireframes.

My colleague Pablo U worked on the UI Design, and I provided feedback for his design. After this, I worked on the prototype and performed the usability tests.

Data Science:

• Petra G: Data Scientist — Statistician
• Alberto B: Data Scientist — Statistician

Web Development:

• Tetiana M: Front-End Developer
• Busayo A: Front-End Developer
• Jonathan B: Back-End Developer

Team Leader:

• Matheus A: Senior Software Engineer, Front-End

User Experience

In the early stages of the project, we defined our working style and set up a weekly meeting with the whole team (Jour Fixe), where we shared our findings and expectations of the project.

At first, we answered pressing questions about the project, and what we all expected it to be.

A brainstorming session involving the whole team took place and answered the following questions:

1. What is our project about?
2. What are our goals?
3. What is the timeline?
4. Which kind of data do we need? And which kind of data do we have?

This brainstorming exercise leads us to answers such as:

• Help refugees find the tools that are necessary to start a life in Berlin
• An App for refugees, asylum-seekers, and stateless people in Berlin, helping them or helping people helping them integrate into a new country and community.
• Mediator between people, who need help, and people who can provide that help. You enter the platform, register, and fill out the form with your needs (or the kind of help you want to provide). The platform matches you with a person or resource, which is relevant to your case. Would be nice to have a chat, where people could exchange information.

More on our brainstorming session here:

Taking this into account, I set out to create a design process for the team of ‘Stronger Together’ to follow.

The design process consisted of 4 stages, each with objectives, tasks, and deliverables. To make sure we followed the steps and completed the tasks, we used Linear.

Process

Framing the problem — Desk research

1. What was necessary to understand: The first stage of research was to understand migration, why it occurs, the incurrence of migration in Germany and in Berlin, the different types of migratory status, the needs and pain points of the migrants, and the local offer of help and support for the community. With this in mind, if one is to offer a digital product to a specific kind of demographic (or users), is necessary to understand what they want and what they need.

Benchmark

1. What was necessary to learn: The purpose of doing benchmark research was to analyze existing apps on the market to gather facts and insights, as well as evaluate the features, and usability of the digital products. In this order of ideas, this method gave us a notion of what was identified as user needs, but it was also a starting point to think about our user needs and pain points as materialized products.

2. Which apps were analyzed:

• Uns App
• Ankommen app
• Nebenan
• Host 4 Ukraine
• Mello
• etc…

More on the analyzed apps here:

Data and Resources - Stronger Together

3. Findings

• In Germany, the apps or web pages are usually not translated into other languages. This is a huge usability problem, as it makes it very difficult for newcomer migrants to access the information, and make use of the resources. This is also proof that ethical and accessible human-centered design is needed in Germany.
• There are apps that can help migrants with finding a place to live, and where to find a job. But there is a lacking of apps directed at integration, and helping migrants connect with each other.
• The needs of migrants (Refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, internally displaced and stateless persons) are very broad, and to provide impactful solutions is necessary to have the involvement of the governmental, public, and private institutions.

User Research

1. What was necessary to understand: User research is the foundation of any product, even more so of a digital product. That is why, for Stronger Together we needed to understand the different kinds of users of our product, their hopes, and their needs in an app. Understanding our user needs and pain points, analyzing the data, separating facts from insights, uncovering implicit bias, and doing fieldwork is what -for our team- would allow our product to develop into something relevant, suitable for use, and impactful.

In other words, our goal was to design a digital experience that helps people to integrate into a new country and community, in this case, Berlin.

2. Interviews and Surveys: 3 interviews for qualitative information were conducted with the participation of two migrants and one asylum seeker. And 23 people participated in our Survey, where we gathered qualitative and quantitative information. The questions were prepared in accordance with guidelines to interview migrant and refugee populations, which we consulted during the desk research phase.

More on our Survey here: