The Refugee Crisis-A UX Case Study

The Challenge

How might we help refugees with problems they face when relocating to the United States?

There is a very real-world refugee crisis. In 2018 there were 70.8 million individuals who were forcibly displaced from their homes. If we were to compare that to world populations forcibly displaced individuals would make up the 20th largest county in the world. To put a further perspective on this global problem 1 in every 108 people is an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee. Refugees are currently numbered at an astounding 25.9 million which is the highest number the world has ever seen.

UX Design Team

I worked on a team of 3 UX designers which consisted of myself (Aaron Watson), Mustafa Akin, and Kyle Kinsey.

My Role: I acted as a leader through the design process. I wore almost every hat in this project as it was my first UX project. Some of the major parts of the process I was involved in were research, survey, interviews, user story map, persona, flow map, and mobile design concepts.

At the point of high fidelity designs, I broke off and personally finished the remainder of the project building website wireframes, and conducting testing. I also branded the finished product HumanBlue and created all the HiFi designs for the entire website.

Empathize

Looking at the immensity of the current crisis our team decided to scale our focus to how the Utah community could best help refugees here in our state.

To best understand how we could help refugees in Utah, we conducted 3 types of interviews.

Refugee- a) To find out the process they went through to be admitted to the United States. b) What help they had received since arriving. c) What are the major challenges they are facing?

Professional- a) To inquire as to what current services and resources are available to refugees in Utah. b) What plan is in place to help refugees once they arrive in Utah? c) What ways can the community help and support Utah refugees?

Citizen- a) To find out what Utahn’s general understanding was of refugees. b) Were they inviting of refugees into their communities? c) What ways did they feel they could help refugees?

From our interviews, we developed 3 main takeaways.

1. Refugees need community assistance to help them fulfill financial needs.
2. Centers need volunteers to help with refugee needs such as transportation and learning of basic life skills.
3. 60% of Utah citizens interviewed did not understand what a refugee actually was. In many cases, Utahn’s confused refugees with illegal immigrants and did not realize refugees have been forced from their country to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

With our current findings, our team decided to gain a greater perspective of the Utah community’s feelings on refugees. We took a quantitative approach running and an online survey of 90 participants around Utah.

Three sets of research statistics gave us insight into defining our direction.

Here we found that Utahn’s had a heart. Only 4.5% were not willing to help refugees in some way.

From the above statistic, we could see that Utahn’s were interested in understanding refugees at a higher level.

Lastly, we could see that though the Utah community was willing to help and also learn more about refugees, most people did not know where to go to accomplish this.

Define

From our research and data, we created a persona to envelop the Utah community. We needed to explore the goals and frustrations of our persona and discover what tasks would be best to solve how the person’s within Utah communities could help refugees. We also needed to address how we could connect them to the resources that were available in Utah. Numerous organizations support refugees within the state of Utah but searching the internet it is fairly difficult to find all the resources within an area. We had to search numerous organization types, events, and topics to find all the hidden resources available.

At this point, we found it essential to story map in order to explore and define how we could connect Utahn’s to the many resources available to them.

Through our story map, we concluded that creating a website that centralized resources would be the most effective way to create a positive experience for Utahn’s to become involved in helping refugees.

Here are the goals we set out to achieve in our new direction.

1. Connect Utah refugee organizations to Utahn’s on one website.
2. Educate Utah citizens about refugees and show them how they can provide assistance.
3. Provide a fast and easy way for monetary donations to help refugees.
4. Connect Utahn’s with local organizations and run the required background checks to become certified volunteers.
5. Create a centralized online location to view all organization events and rsvp.
6. Inspire others to participate in the community through social posts of Utah citizen’s inspirational experiences at refugee events.

Ideate

Mobile First

After creating a flow map to discover the basic structure of our website we started into a mobile-first sketch. We used this tool to explore layout and basic design while also further exploring how and where content and information would appear.

At this point, I moved to wireframing. I wanted to focus on a simple and intuitive guided process for the user. I needed to make tasks intuitive with simple processes so that it was easy to become involved without extensive effort upfront for the user. This way they could quickly donate, sign up to volunteer or find events in which they could attend and become involved in the Utah refugee community.

From here I created HiFi designs and built a prototype to put the simplicity of my designs to the test. I also started thinking about the branding of the website and wanted to use color that was not only relatable to refugees but also brought a feeling of professionalism and made the brand trustworthy. I used a light blue color which is the international color for refugees. The logo mark represents the 3 types of people our product brings together; refugees, professionals, and Utah citizens. I kept the interface clean to make it a quick and easy cognitive experience.

HiFi Designs

Prototype

Conclusion

In retrospect, I am pleased with the solutions we designed in creating a better experience for Utahn’s who might be looking to help refugees. We were able to provide solutions for several major issues.

1. We addressed the issue of helping Utahn’s better understand what a refugee was through video and written information which defined what refugees are. What challenges they face and how we as community members can help them.
2. The team created a way for Utahn’s to easily make one time, monthly and annual donations. This will help fulfill many of the basic needs that refugees have monetarily while receiving needed training and education to become self-sufficient.
3. Centers around Utah needed volunteers and we instrumented an efficient process in which they could not only find a local center and volunteer activity. They could also submit the required background check and get connected to their chosen center for orientation and training in three quick steps.
4. Social interaction is essential to helping refugees feel accepted when integrating them into society. The ease of finding all Utah refugee events in a single location gives Utahn’s the ability to easily interact and build positive relationships within the community.
5. The community page reinforces the positive ways in which relationships are building and growing between refugees and Utah citizens. It provides powerful insight that can inspire and motivate others to get involved in taking action to help alleviate the refugee crisis.

Through this project, I gained a great appreciation for the many freedoms and luxuries I enjoy every day. We have resources to help refugees in dire need of our support. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn and grow from the education and experience I gained through this eye-opening project.

Special thanks to Geoff Tribe, Spencer Rich, and Sarah Corcoran.