YOGYA : Case Study on migrating workers

Author : Kaustubh Ag and Nishita Patnaik

Problem Statement

In recent years, with most of our documentation and transactions happening in an online mode, technology has been playing a huge role in our daily lives. It is observed that socio-economic groups this switch from traditional / offline to digital is also being introduced to socio-economic groups with lesser digital literacy. At many times, these socio-economic groups struggle to completely understand and make use of these applications due to lack of exposure.

How can we design for these socio-economic groups? What problems do they face?

There are still so many socio-economic groups which do not get work and they sit on a place and wait for somebody to reach them. They do not know that how they can get work that there is importance of them and they can get paid for the any kind of work they do. In this digital era where people can connect with just a single tap why not we create something which connect these migrant workers, labors and other socio-economic groups with the people who need them.

Design Framework

A design framework is a simple visual structure that helps organize the information and ideas of a problem so you can work on it more effectively.

We used Double Diamond Framework for this project.

Discover

Secondary Research

After some hours of web surfing, reading news articles, blogs and Wikipedia stating the statistics of the condition of the labors.

• 94% work in unincorporated, unorganized enterprises and rest our provided by the government.
• At least 55.5 million workers in India do not get employment for even six months a year and most of them are illiterate.
• About 30 million workers are migrant workers, most of them are in agricultural sector, and local stable employment is unavailable for them.
• 45% regular workers earn less than the existing minimum wage standard.
• 80% of Indians have bank accounts but many of them don’t use it.

Primary Research

We interviewed 4 people to understand the actual problem. 2 of them were labors and 2 were shopkeepers who need their help.

Insights we got

There are people who need workers but they are not able to find them because their is not a specific place or platform where the worker can register themselves as an individual who are ready to work. People with profession like painters, carpenters, sweepers are unemployed. Generally they get work when some one who know them refer them to the person who need them.

Define

Pain points of the labors

• Migration: Some workers migrate frequently which results in loss of job and when they enter a new place they are unknown and unemployed
• Documents: Many workers don't have required documents needed to use government policies
• Contractors/Employers: They constantly dependent on middle person for work which leads to exploitation of them. As they keeping taking advantage of their vulnerability.
• Low Pay and Long Working Hours: They are made to work long hours with low wages, many of them stable jobs and if they even have, they feel insecure of losing job which makes contractors taking advantages of them.
• No Job Training: Many workers are new to work and don’t know anything which put them at risk at hazardous place and getting low wages.
• No Regular or Fixed Schedule: They can be called any time and may make them for 10–12 hours a day.
• Lack of Services: They don’t have access to health services, and many other facilities.

Who, What, Why , How ?

We use this method to understand for whom we are creating app and what problem they are facing and how can we solve their problem.

Who are the Labors?

Migrant Labors are the one who migrates from once city to other or were recruited by the contractors for work. They move from one place to another as their work demands.

Why do labors Migrate ?

Labors previously are working in farm or living in village do not find the source of income well, they migrate to get better job opportunities in the city and many of them are farmers who don’t have proper resources to do farming. So they migrate in search of job and better wages.

What problems do migrant labors face ?

Labors face abuse and exploitation they are made to work for long hours and for low wages. They are new to work and don’t have any job training even if they have a skill, they don't have a platform where they can get work and paid accordingly the hours of work.

How labors deal with their problems ?

Many of them accept the fate and let higher officials take advantage of them. Few of them not able to handle as all the responsibilities of family which makes them to take extreme steps to end their life.

Persona

Using what we got from research and considering the scenario we built a persona to completely understand the problem. We use personas to ideate and think in their perspective what they would have done.

Problem Space

Many Labors are in need of work and they only dependent on contractors for work and many of them get paid very less for working whole day.

Their are people who need workers and are ready to pay them according to the difficulty of work and work hours.

Why we have chosen this problem statement ?

People who are ready to work are not known by people who really need them. Labors don’t know the place where they can register themselves and get known by the people who need them

How might we ?

• How might we make contractors to help labors and not take advantage of them ?
• How might we help labors to find jobs at which they are skilled ?
• How might we help group of labors in getting a job ?
• How might we connect workers and the people who need them ?

Solution

Let’s build a platform where workers can register themselves and can choose the kind of work they want to do like painting a house, carpenter, a simple task like moving objects from one place to another etc. and people who need them can contact them for work.

Develop

Storyboarding

An example how YOGYA will connect workers and people who need them.

Information Architecture

Whatever work each screen will be doing was added in the information architecture.

Deliver

User Flow

Color Palate

Font

We chose Inter for Heading and DM Sans for the Body of text. It is important to make text easily visible even if screen is small.

Final Prototype

This is the app’s final prototype, along with a description of what each screen accomplishes.

Conclusion

We created an interface YOGYA through which migrant workers, labors can find work very easily according to their location. We think of adding more features which will enable workers to use the app even in the phones which doesn’t have any touchpad. We also think of adding voice over text for who don’t know to read and write in phone.

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