ImmiHelp
The app and educational programme designed to make cities more inclusive and accessible for expats and immigrants.
Expats and immigrants can experience isolation and struggle to adapt to a new culture and language, mainly when trying to figure things out themselves. We decided to reimagine their experience, helping people find support, and connect with the local community and other expats around them.
Project overview
*Coincidentally, the three of us were living abroad, so we also took the survey and shared our lived experiences. It definitely added an extra and special layer of empathy to the project and enabled us to better frame/speculate about the project.
Research
To frame our challenge and better understand the people we were designing for, we developed a questionnaire and conducted two types of qualitative research:
Interviews: each of us interviewed a person from our professional/personal circle, plus an expert from the educational area
Online survey: we used the same questions and shared it on Facebook among our connections to organically gather more insights and counterproof our findings.
Synthesis: clustering and analysing insights from the qualitative research to explore the scenario, discover people’s pain points and uncover opportunities.
Our research revealed the main struggles, concerns and needs that our interviewees experienced before moving abroad and while living in a different country.
-
Struggle to make friends, mainly if not feeling confident with the language.
-
Lack of empathy and understanding from locals regarding difficulties faced.
-
Learning from others’ experiences through social media and forums smooths the process.
-
Frustration if someone laughs at you while learning the language.
-
Emotional, mental and financial support would be very beneficial.
-
It is useful to find a community from the same country of origin.
Our main insight came from a story shared by one of the interviewees: the person demonstrated great excitement about a positive in-store experience she had while living abroad, and that feeling resonated deeply with our own and other participant's experiences.
“We went with a dictionary in a bicycle shop and wanted to buy a bicycle lock, but we did not know what 'size' is called. The shop guy showed us different bicycle locks and explained, 'That is a little lock. That is a big lock. That is a bigger lock.' We had so much fun.”
While brainstorming, we realised that customers were not the only ones who would need support. We had to address the problem from different angles, taking into account also the perspective of shop owners and locals that might not be aware of non-locals struggles.
Aiming to increase effectiveness, facilitate adoption and enable change, our proposed solution was:
An empathic training for business owners and their employees, to increase awareness and learn how to better interact with the specific client
Special signage to display in the shop's window, identifying the place was welcoming and prepared
And, an app that would bring all the pieces together and ease expats/immigrants' adaptation
Analysing systems, touchpoints and procedures: identifying key interactions
Our solution
App screens designed by Tsu, our aspiring UX/UI Designer
Testing
Due to time constraints (short deadlines and all of us having demanding full time jobs), we couldn't test the app prototype/screens with many people, but we received positive feedback from those who lived with us (also expats and some who took part in the interview). Everyone reported it as intuitive enough and with features that would have helped them navigate/establish themselves in a new city or if visiting as a tourist - this second feedback made us wonder if we could expand the use of the app :)
Learnings and thoughts
The power of a story: the narrative of one of our interviewees conveyed the feelings and expectations that most people living abroad reported, including ourselves.
Leveraging online tools: we didn't have much time to conduct 1 to 1 interviews, so I suggested the team for us also create an online survey as a way to gather more insights and balance our findings.
Lived experience: our stories as expats gave us extra context and knowledge, and enhanced our capability to empathise when interviewing and putting people at the centre of our solution.