Make registration process comfortable
Migrating in a new city might bring a lot of challenges. You have to adapt to a new culture, language and besides that, you have to fulfill a lot of paperwork and other administrative tasks. Because it’s very challenging my team and I decided in our first project at Ironhack to find a better solution to make the process less painful and more comfortable for the newcomers. At the end we were supposed to visualize the solution by a simple hand-drawing sketch on paper. The focus was to learn how to research and identifying a specific problem. Let me take you through this Design Thinking Process and let me explain which methods we used on our journey.
Step 1 - Research (Empathize)
We need answers
Who is moving? What are the reasons for moving to a new city? Which main administrative issues face people? How is the person completing the task (in person, by phone or online)? These questions and a lot more we tried to figure out. We found our answers in an online survey we prepared. Below you see a short summary of the survey results.
Our assumptions have been confirmed. But we needed to go deeper. Therefore we interviewed people, who moved recently to get more insights and qualitative data.
Step 2 - Define
To synthesize our findings in order to turn data into actionable information, we put all the insights we got from the survey and interviews on sticky notes and grouped them afterwards. An Affinity Diagram gave us an overview of our existing data.
Since we didn’t want to design for generic users, we took an edge case, a Syrian refugee who came to Germany to start a new life, from our interviews and created the User Persona.
Joe faces some difficulties during the registrations process in the registration offices. To point these out, we have created a Storyboard with a User Journey which shows the current state of the registration process.
The storyboard helped us not only to recognize the pain points but also the user needs. With this visualized representation we could now define the problem and came to the following problem statement:
Before we jumped into the brainstorming process to find as many solutions for Joe, we wanted to change our way of thinking so as not to rule out any solutions. This is where “How Might We” statements come in. With HMW’s we reframed problems into opportunities. That helped us to move towards to the solutions and having a broader perspective of problem-solving.
After we generated as much HMW´s as we could, we dot voted in silence and came up with the final “HMW” statement, which became the focus of the rest of our sprint:
3. Ideate
Time to stand up and being creative
After we have set our leading question, which allows us to think more broadly, we took the time to make a quick (5 minutes) Brainstorm to gather ideas for possible solutions on sticky notes. We have arranged our ideas in a Mind Map and grouped them into three main sections. Environment. Support. Accessibility.
Crazy 8. We did two rounds of Crazy 8. After the first round, we pinned our sketches to the wall so everyone could see them. Then we drew a second round. The results this time were different. Most ideas were inspired by the sketches hanging on the wall. We developed them further or added new ideas in our drawings. Afterwards everyone has chosen their favorite idea and perfected the sketch in another 5 minutes. See the results here:
Three of the drawings (pictures 1,3 and 4) show a solution for a faster process in the registration office which is also in a comfortable environment with café and music. The second drawing is a welcome app which provides the arriving person with the necessary information. After a dot voting in silence, we have selected the first idea.
When Joe goes into the registration office he simply scans the required documents at the terminal. Joe verifies himself with his identity card or similarly valid documents confirming his identity. From now on, the work will be taken over by machines, but the scanned documents will be finally checked by a staff member. After a maximum stay of 15 minutes, Joe is registered and leaves the office. He can now start into his new life.
Conclusion
Instead of trying to change the whole concept of the registration office, we should have concentrated on one thing. Of course, we as bloody beginners wanted to solve everything.
The next steps: Since the focus was primarily on becoming comfortable with the methods of the Design Thinking Process and applying them, we will design a prototype that sets the focus on the terminal. For this, we have to go through a further research, to find out what requirements such a terminal must have.
Any feedback? Let’s get in touch. Contact me on LinkedIn.
