User Research on the Immigration Process; A Wicked Problem || Ironhack Case Study

Overview

In the first week of my full-time UX/UI bootcamp at Ironhack my team and I were presented with a wicked problem that we were tasked to solve. In this instance, immigration was the complex issue that we selected.

We were given the following project brief:

“People’s mobility has increased exponentially all around the world in recent years. Even though migration has always been a common phenomenon throughout history, humankind has never seen such a wide variety of destinations, motivations, and configurations. Along with the experience of migrating to a new country — like having to adapt to a different culture or language — comes a number of bureaucratic duties that must be completed within a particular time frame to validate the journey in the host country. How might we provide necessary information to guide the immigrants transition to a new country”

This project is intended to ease the anxiety and give clarity throughout the process to commuting to a new country of people who travel each year.

In this project I worked on a team with design students. We collaborated going through each step of the design thinking process together.

The team as a whole learned a lot throughout our first project using the design thinking method. With only one day allotted for research during the week-long challenge .

Research

After assessing the wicked problem and how we would approach a solution the team conducted qualitative research. we completed secondary research and prepared interview questions. While only receiving 5 responses due to time constraints, we still received some useful information.

Some of the most important questions:

• how did you prepared yourself for your moving?
• How was your first day as a newcomer?
• in which area u faced difficultly
• what do u think would help you in that and what do you wish to have ?

After sorting through the survey responses we observed that:

• The average commuting period is every 3 months to different places.
• Most reported big contrast in weather and culture.
• Completing the immigration process is seen as very difficult from most users
• Desire a platform with sufficient information mainly on finding SIM card service.

Define

Following the organization and analysis of our qualitative data, we started to bring our ideas together to describe the issue. Several UX design tools were utilized to facilitate our work. Affinity mapping was the first one.

Affinity Mapping

“Affinity diagramming has long been used in business to organize large sets of ideas into clusters. In UX, the method is used to organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.” — Nielsen Norman Group

We organized all of our ideas in one whiteboard.

Gathering and categorizing our ideas on the immigration process to helps empathize with our users . This allowed us to find the pain points in their journey.

Persona

After using the previous design thinking tools we were able to come up with a persona.

The persona was based on our research to match our base user group and to create there story,

User Journey Map

The team can use this map to arrange our persona’s possible emotions and follow them through the immigration process elabortley.Also highlights opportunities for us to assist the user in achieving their ultimate objective.

Problem Statements & “How Might We” Questions

Following a exhaustive qualitative research approach and the application of multiple UX design tools to arrange and interpret our results, we are left with problem statements and “how might we” queries that help us get ready for the ideation stage.

Ideation

After we formed our problem statements we set out to answer our “how might we” questions in a brainstorming session. We found that the prominent issue the users are facing is accessing SIM card services.

Crazy 8s

“Crazy 8’s is a core Design Sprint method. It is a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. The goal is to push beyond your first idea, frequently the least innovative, and to generate a wide variety of solutions to your challenge.” — Google Design Sprints

We used an ideation tool Crazy 8s we came to an efficient sketch that suits our users main problem

Minimum Viable Product

MVP Statement:

Learnings

The first project and going through the design thinking process I learned that secondary research is very important to fill in gaps in information and encourage pain points ideas and knowledge of the market concerning our wicked problem.All things considered, it was an excellent experience, Looking forward to our upcoming project and the additional information we’ll be receiving over the rest of our boot camp!