Phase 2 | Exploratory Research: Details

A detailed description of exploratory research our team has done thus far.

1.30.18 Interview with an English as a New Language teacher

I spoke with an English as a New Language (ENL) teacher at Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City. Valuable insights I gained were:

• Aside from language acquisition, navigating complicated bureaucracy is one of the biggest challenges immigrants face. This is overcome through practice, exposure, and by breaking things down into simpler, smaller steps
• The home environment, education level of the family, and proficiency in native language grammar all have an impact on language acquisition
• It takes 2–3 years for people to acquire BICS (basic interpersonal communication skills) and 5–7 years of schooling every day to acquire CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency)
• Integrating language learning with real examples of the language in use is the best way to teach. Duolingo, then, is potentially useful platform but too abstract and divorced from everyday interactions.
• Google classroom is used quite a bit by instructors

2.4.18 Interview with Wasi Mohamed

I spoke with Wasi Mohamed, who is the chair of the Welcoming Pittsburgh Steering Committee and Executive Director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh. Valuable insights I gained were:

• Mayor Peduto is making exerted efforts to attract immigrants to fill the 80,000 job vacancies that will take place in the next ten years.
• Language is a big barrier to settling in a place. People are more likely to settle where they can find others who speak their language and have a cultural/religious community
• Aside from language, job placement and employment stability are a big challenge
• Immigrants can go into depression because of the individualistic society here and the isolation they feel. In his view, immigrants who come alone (single or without their family) are more likely to have a hard time adjusting.
• Places of worship, restaurants owned by community members, and cultural associations are important resources to help immigrants adjust

2.7.18 Interview with Silvia Mata-Marin

Silvia is a PhD candidate in the School of Design whose research centers around immigrants and refugees, so we decided to talk to her to get some insights on our project. When speaking with Rebecca from NAMS, she mentioned how refugees have to undergo a paradigm shift in order to adjust to the new culture. Not wanting to convey the idea that immigrants have to shed their native culture in order to be accepted into American society, we talked about finding the balance between assimilation (assuming the cultural norms of a dominant group) and integration (maintaining both the cultural norms of the dominant and heritage culture). In discussing this, we realized the importance of an intervention that doesn’t demand the user to fundamentally alter his/her worldview, but to offer tools to help adjust to more logistical aspects of a new country, like language, finding a community, and finding access to resources.

Silvia also spoke about the lack of cultural sensitivity training for dominant groups in environments as diverse as CMU, so we think that is an interesting potential opportunity for intervention.

02.02.18 Interview with Nadya Kessler from Global Pittsburgh

Global Pittsburgh is a non-profit organization that helps immigrants settle in Pittsburgh. Through its various programs it helps internationals connect to local community. Our main takeaways from our conversation with her were:

• Most immigrants don’t know what resources exist
• There is a lack of Cultural awareness on both ends: immigrants and the locals
• Understanding language issues- local dialect/accents, colloquiums etc.
• Lack of credit history makes access to daily necessities like gas, bank account difficult.
• Lack of awareness about appropriate (expected) behavior in social interactions and situations.
• Social Media is really helpful in finding local communities, seeking out help and making enquiries about local customs. It plays a big role in organizing

Events they host for immigrant networking: inter- cultural Potlucks, painting nights, museum trips, gallery crawls.

Areas that they could do with more help in:

• There is no unified universal language resource.
• Even if educated, lack of practice breeds self doubt in communication.

02.02.18 Interview with Rebecca Johnson and Molly Rice from NAMS

Rebecca Johnson is the Director of Community Assistance and Refugee Resettlement, Northern Area Multi-Service Center which is she says is the largest refugee resettlement partner (in Pittsburgh) with the Federal department.

Her team is the first point of (official) contact/support for refugees who’ve been granted asylum resettle in the United States.

• Mostly Bhutanese population in Pgh. Small population of Congolese, Rwanda, Uganda Burmese etc.

About the Resettlement process:

• The government decides who to send to which area. They have no control.
• 3 month resettlement support time frame — Case management
• Work on an established timeline set by the govt. : Provide financial support, Help find housing, Jobs, Health ( mental and behavioral also) check-ups / food stamps, welfare/ enroll kids in school/ SSN, Banking etc.
• Provide english learning classes
• Give a home orientation
• Provide interpretation services to the refugees
• Employment system — important — helps to start over — provide support with employment for 5 years.
• Government gives “ A house in a box” — basic necessities ( not really enough)
• Other points: Federal government mandates gender inclusivity policies: Giving money to both male and female members of a family. Ensuring that the female speaks for herself. Male members are dissuaded from translating.

Difficulties For Agency:

• Taxing on agencies to get everything ready before arrival.
• Different populations have different kind of needs and thus have difference in the way they acclimate to the new place.
• cultural orientation in the camp is not mandated.

Difficulties For refugees:

• Too much happening too fast. No time to comprehend.
• Overwhelming and isolated
• TV is a huge escape
• Vast difference in reality vs. Expectation
• Different expectation related to work: qualifications ( or lack of proof), difference in cultural beliefs, work experience, kind and amount of work, reject survival jobs
• They reach out to respective religious communities for help
• Understanding legal restriction and implications ( not sending kids to school, girls have to goto school)
• Catching up with education as some camps don’t have schools
• Fear of authority
• fear of loss of identity ( for some that is all they have left)

Key points:

• Despite all the help, the length of time doesn’t matter to adjust. It varies from individual to individual
• Work is related to self-identification
• Cultural Competency?? ( ask Hajira)
• Financial literacy is crucial ( woman who threw away quarters as she didn’t know its value, woman who didn’t know how to use a card and withdrew cash all the time )
• Priorities: Educational & financial stability
• Local churches, mosques, existing communities, volunteer groups provide additional support
• Generation rift in refugees about education & learning
• Refugees are mostly very resilient, capable and have life skills
• Paradigm change- uphill battle

Biggest barrier:

• Language
• Little things, everyday micro interactions: locking the door, answering the phone. turning the gas on and off.

Student Immigrant Survey

We created a survey to distribute to student immigrants with the intent of answering the following question: What difficulties do immigrants encounter when they first came to US, and what methods they take to acclimate?

We asked the following questions and received 15 responses:

When did you arrive in America?

How proficient in the English language were you upon arrival?

How familiar were you with American cultural norms before arriving?

How long did it take for you to feel comfortable with American cultural norms?

How did you learn about English and American cultural norms?

What are your preferred learning environments?

What learning environments do you think were most effective in learning English and about American cultural norms?

What were the most stressful moments when coming to America?

“My thesis mid-point presentation in Dec 2017. It rose my confidence in multiple ways. First, I was usually worried about presentation in English. This time, although I didn’t practice much, it went smooth. Also feedback from reviewers confirmed that my project is pretty on the right track.”

“Dealing with uncertainty like renting house, buying car. I thin these experience highly depend on the people you encounter”

“First few days speaking English to natives. Homesick a lot. First time got into social gathering where I had to find topics and talk to people.”

What social interactions were most difficult for you when coming to America?

“Networking. I’m not a extrovert person. Networking with many strangers is sooo awkward. I was struggled hard with language and what topic I can initiate and keep a conversation. Oh..plus when and how I finish a conversation and move on to another one without awkwardness.”

“There are special wording or use of language (informal language) that it is hard to learn before arrive.”

“People are so cold, self-centered and unapproachable here. I am afraid to have any real interactions with them fearing what might offend them.”

Takeaways

Through this survey, we got a general idea of some of the barriers that student immigrants face and the methods by which they overcome them. Navigating social situations with native speakers in a new country seems to be a commonly overwhelming experience. And language in general is an issues that underscores everything else. Also, learning through social interaction is the most utilized, liked, and effective (as they believe) method of learning social and cultural norms in America.

These insights helped to inform the participatory design workshop we held with international student later in this phase (described below).

Graffiti Wall

Graffiti Wall:

We made a graffiti wall in our studio and in the hall way of Margret Morrison,in order to gather some basic thoughts, and pain points from immigrant students.

Here are some findings we got from graffiti wall:

1. People complain about logistic issues, like paying taxes, dealing with Visa, and find healthy and good food;
2. Some also mentioned that having interview through phone is hard;
3. Logistic: Healthcare system, Taxes, Visa, Good & healthy food, feel humiliated when entering US
4. Social: having interview on the phone
5. Cultural : many different political views, Small talk is weird, drinking culture

Participants filling out Journey Maps at the Workshop

2.9.18 Participatory Design Workshop

Once we had decided to hone in on international students, we decided to do a participatory design workshop to get the maximum amount of direct input from the students themselves. We also thought it would be a good way to try out different research methods, to see what works and what doesn’t in a participatory framework. We’re providing food as incentive and to make it a bit more informal; we want participants to feel at ease and willing to share their thoughts and experiences. The wording of our promotional emails and posters reinforce that idea, trying to relate to potential participants on a more personal level.

We started out by brainstorming different methods that could be used in a workshop environment. We decided to select four of our favorites to have one “activity” at each of the four tables in the studio classroom. We also decided to leave it a bit unstructured so that participants can spread out at different tables and take their time with each activity.

We then reframed each prompt to ensure it is answering a question we want to have answered through this workshop.

Questions & Methods

Questions we want answers to from international students and the methods we are using to answer them:

• What would they have liked to know/have before arriving, and When does learning start
  “A Letter to my Past Self,” in which participants advise their past self on “If I knew then what I know now.” By doing so, we can identify at what point learning should begin—before, or after arrival in the United States, and thereby identify opportunities for intervention.
• What was their most awkward social interaction
  Storyboard an experience, in which participants draw an interaction or experience that was difficult for them, and then write down feelings and thoughts related to that experience.
• What types of technology aid their adjustment
  Solutions collation, in which participants respond to categories of barriers by writing on Post-Its methods they’ve used to adjust to those barriers. For example, for the Language category, they might write “Google Translate.” My team and I will later affinity diagram the Post-Its to synthesize the results.
• What were their biggest challenges in adjusting to a new country
  Journey Map, in which participants mark their emotional journey along a timeline, beginning 3 months from arrival to now. Participants will also be asked to describe high or low points along the journey, which will help us identify pain points and opportunities for intervention.

We will also have another graffiti wall for people to add any other thoughts or reflections they might have.

Logistics

• We printed out and put up posters throughout the design school and in the University Center to attract participants.
• We reached out to personal contacts to try to get students from other universities in Pittsburgh to attend, but were largely unsuccessful on that front. Given more time, we would have liked to promote more heavily outside the design school and outside of CMU.
• We created a simple RSVP Google Form to have participants RSVP so we have an idea of how much food we will need.
• We will have a sign-up sheet for people interested in participating in further research over the course of the project.

Results

We had about 15 CMU students participate in our workshop, most of which were designers. We would have liked to have more participants from different disciplines and different universities, but we were happy with the input we received. After the workshop, we spent about 3 hours synthesizing all of results for each activity individually and as a whole.

Journey Map

We went through each journey map and wrote the main high and low points, each on a Post-It, and then did an affinity mapping to identify the common areas. The main low points (unhappy & frustrating) that people marked are :

• Visa and immigration paperwork
• Logistics
• Job hunting
• Getting used to language

The main high points are:

• Getting an internship
• Finding community
• Being able to adjust to new life, school, language

We also scanned each map and created a gif for a visualization of people’s different experiences over time.

Journey Map gif

Storyboarding

For this synthesis, we used two colored Post-It notes: one for the situation and another for the solution they wish they had had. The solutions people suggested were a valuable insight, showing the demand for contextual, real-time help.

Solutions Collation

We organized these Post-Its in two ways. Initially, we did an affinity diagram of solutions that people use for each category of barriers. We were able to see some common approaches across categories, but it was difficult to glean any valuable insights from that.

Affinity diagram of solutions used per barrier (Language, Logistics, Finding Community, and Social & Cultural Differences)

So we re-plotted the Post-Its on two axes: one going from formal to informal structure and the other axes going from solitary to community-based solutions. From this, we could very clearly see that the majority of people used friends or family as a resource. Very few used formal classes as a means of learning about the culture or language. And aside from watching TV and movies, hardly any activities were solitary.

Reorganizing the Post-Its on two axes

Letter to My Past Self

For this activity, we went through each letter and marked the important points on individual Post-It notes. We then did an affinity diagram to identify over-arching categories. We found that a large number of people reminded their past selves to keep a positive attitude.

Affinity Diagram of responses to “Letter to My Past” activity