How Design can help Refugees — Global Goals Jam Berlin 2019

In late September this year I took part as a challenge owner in the Global Goals Jam Berlin. The purpose of the Jam is to facilitate design sprints that map out possible solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda by the UN. This year the following topics were covered:
- Water and Climate Change (SDG 4, SDG 13)
- Migration (SDG 10, SDG 16)
- Electronic Waste (SDG 12)
- Sustainable Development for People and Planet (SDG 1, SDG 8)

A couple of months earlier I had founded Asylum Advice, a social startup that was aiming to make legal advice more accessible to asylum seekers in Germany. From the perspective of Asylum Advice the goal was to re-evaluate its assumptions and approach the topic on a bigger scale with fresh ideas from the outside.
Every topic was approached by a mixed team of people bringing expertise from various backgrounds. With a background in service design, international relations, software development, human rights and UX design we had a rich toolset to start our problem solving process.
Discovery
Knowing that migration was a very broad topic, it was clear to us in the beginning that we had to focus on migrants that were most vulnerable and most likely to be exploited. Most of us migrate from one place to the other at some point in our life. But not all of us migrate because their human rights are violated and furthermore often run the risk of being exploited while migrating and settling in a new place. This meant that from the outset our main focus was on refugees. This is why we invited two refugees and one refugee worker for interviews to shed light onto their lives and consequently the biggest problems they had run into.

With Asylum Advice I had already conducted a survey and various interviews with refugees and refugee workers in order to find out what the biggest struggles were. For that purpose the focus had been on legal advice and the timeframe of the asylum procedure in Germany. At the Global Goals Jam we started out with a more general perspective. Our interviewees told their journey from their home country to Germany and the struggles that they encountered. We quickly realised, however, that trying to approach problems that refugees encountered during their journey would exceed our scope and capabilities.
That’s why we decided to focus on the timeframe after their arrival in Germany. One of the biggest issues that played a role for people during their asylum procedure was the lack of clear information and guidance. Furthermore it transpired that even though there are various websites that help refugees after their arrival, they often stay unnoticed and have little impact.
Ideation and Prototyping
Examining our research findings we came to the conclusion to build an aggregator tool called Refugee Buddy that would guide people through their process of arriving in Germany. As there are already many services online that help refugees and migrants, the most important thing was to make them visible and create a guidance mechanism. Depending on what needs were most urgent it was possible to either get connected to legal advice services, health services, or websites that helped out with finding work, or studying. Having gone through this process the tool would also give the option of helping others that had just arrived in Germany. This way people would be encouraged to engage with each other and build a community.

Having these ideas in place we built a quick design prototype in Adobe XD and pitched it at the closing evening of the Global Goals Jam. The pitch event was open to the public and also had a jury attending that asked questions to the 4 teams from the 4 different fields.

Outlook
Even though it was possible to continue with our project and also enter a competition for being featured as a project on the crowdfunding platform Start Next, we didn’t find the capacity to do so. It also seemed important to first launch the Asylum Advice service that had clearer limits and a smaller scope. The Asylum Advice service is planned to be online by late November. With the actual service online it will be much easier to estimate what other functionalities might work, and which ones don’t. After that it would be interesting to come back to the idea we developed at the Global Goals Jam.

Apart from bringing new insights and perspectives the Global Goals Jam was a nice opportunity to network with people and connect over issues that really matter. It is an event that raises awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals and enables public and business interests to engage with solutions that align with these goals. An exchange that is very important in order to tackle the most pressing issues of our time.
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If you want to know more about my personal work visit: michaellausberg.com

