Immigration: How can we make the administrative processes clear ?
Emigrating to a foreign country is a stressful and uncertain experience, and when it comes to official paperwork there’s no clear path to follow, information is lacking, and oftentimes it is required to speak the local language for some mandatory procedures.
This issue has the potential to be made straightforward and clear; thus we were asked to solve one aspect of the problem. This was part of an Ironhack project focusing on user-research and fast prototyping.
What are we solving ?
Our aim was quite simple : Offering complete but simplified information on the necessary steps to take, in a motivating and guiding application. That way we think we can give control to users over their procedures, creating a stress-free experience.
Since our time frame was of only 3 days, we decided to scope down our project and focus on european migrants who have moved to Berlin in the last 5 years.
Research Phase
After leading 4 interviews with european migrants, we received some great insight, organized all of it in an Empathy Map, which allowed us to eventually design our persona.
Here are some emerging points from our interviews :
- Feeling “stupid” and led, with no understanding of what they’re doing.
- Feeling anxious about potential mistakes and their consequences.
- Getting information from : Forums, Youtube videos of expats, or friends.
From there we managed to create a persona for whom we will be designing :
A young, self-reliant man called Alex who works as a bartender. His job security is lacking so he is often anxious about his situation. Additionally, he doesn’t speak German and he tends to get lazy when he’s not interested.
Thus, we’re gonna need to give him incentive, motivation and control over his procedures so that he succeeds in completing them.
Our Solution
Our reduced scope made the process relatively straightforward. Since the objective was to offer complete information on the steps to take, the solutions that started to emerge from our brainstorming and sketching sessions involved lists, progress bars, and overview of every step. We quickly found a consensus based on Alex’s needs and expectations, which eventually led to the following Lo-Fi Prototype.
Here are 2 screens from that prototype, showing the main interactions and solution to our problem :
There’s huge potential to help many people in such a situation. Our scope was quite reduced but you can imagine how this could apply all around the world, including migrants in dire situations like political and war refugees.
With enough time and resources I believe this product should offer : In-app appointments, document uploads and translation. It could also include a forum allowing people to help and guide each other, since we’ve noticed that migrants tend to look for information given by people of their own nationality.
Thanks to Boris Bojara & Mariana Sussekind for this week’s project !
