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What did I do?

I led the creation of an interactive app designed to facilitate connections and mutual assistance among new migrants in the USA. The platform facilitates task swapping among migrants and incorporates social media functions for cultural exchange, promoting connections and making it easy for them to forge friendships and bonds.

We did observational field studies of two locations in Atlanta that draw a large international community

Why was it done?

Migrant population in the USA is huge, and moving to a new country is challenging both practically and emotionally. We want to create a safe place for migrants to ask for and receive help.

What did I learn?

The significance of actively engaging target users at every product stage and managing diverse user opinions effectively.

“How can I build these huge furnitures alone…”

“I want to make my home food so badly, but that supermarket is too far away…”

“How can I make friends here…”

Fostering a Community of Mutual Assistance

Browse available tasks to book the help you need. You can also create tasks to offer practical help for others!

Connecting Cultures, Creating Friendships

Browse posts to learn about diverse cultures or share your own experiences. Whether you're interested in discovering similarities or embracing differences, this is your bridge to forming meaningful connections with people from various backgrounds.

We sent out a survey and got 165 responses.

Different Countries

49 Indian

21 Chinese

10 South African

Close friends and a cultural community were the most important.

We found that the top 2 most important things when moving to a new country are close friends and cultural community. And most of our participants desired both practical and emotional support

Randomly chosen 6 participants from our survey

These 6 migrants were in the age group 18-55. To create the questions for the interview, we referenced our old set of research questions as well as insights from our survey. We ensured that we had a rationale for each question so as to optimise the questions asked.

Desire for Similar Experiences

Our participants wished to make friends with people who share similar experiences, including cultural, educational, and interest-related commonalities. They also express a desire to make friends with people from other cultures, indicating a balanced interest in diverse and like-minded friendships.

Challenges in Adjustment

Our participants faced various challenges when adjusting to life in the USA. This includes difficulties in logistics, education, employment, and language. This in turn resulted in emotional difficulties.

Desire for Cultural Exchange

Our participants expressed a desire to engage in cultural exchanges, especially through food and other means. This indicates an interest in sharing their own culture and learning about others.

Idea 1: Task Swap

To find other migrants who are willing to help them with tasks. Available tasks will be published on the platform and migrants in need of help will be able to scroll through these tasks to find what matches their needs.

Idea 2: Migrant Culture Exchange

To share and exchange cultures through posting about their cultures, and potentially participate in cultural events and make friends in the process

Collaborative Design Exploration

We each sketched out a rough drawing of what they imagined the application to look like, including layout, features, and design. We then discussed it as a team to determine features and layouts that we felt best fulfilled the design requirements.

Task Planet

Browse available tasks to book the help you need. You can also create tasks to offer practical help for others! There is an in-app currency system to not only encourages active participation but also reinforces the sense of community and reciprocity within the platform.

Cultural Planet

My Profile

Confusion between task and cultural planets

The purpose of 'Task Planet' and 'Cultural Planet' requires clearer definitions to ensure users understand that 'Task Planet' is for booking tasks, not information retrieval, and that 'Cultural Planet' hosts diverse posts from migrants.

Solution: Add onboarding

An onboarding process on the main pages helps orient users better.

Lack of trust in virtual avatars

Users strongly prefer real profile pictures for trust and better connections, especially among migrants seeking companionship.

Solution: Use real photos with reporting mechanisms

A safer environment could be achieved through features like temporary blocking, reporting mechanisms, and community guidelines. Allowing profile photo omission for privacy is also crucial.

Anxiety about the point system for getting favors

Some users expressed how this system might discourage them from using the app. It’s also hard for migrants who have stayed in the USA for a while to continue offering help to others.

Solution: Use points and levels as a motivator

Instead of making the points as a transaction currency for exchanging favors, we use it as a motivator with a potential holiday point multiplier, a review system, and introducing levels based on points earned, granting 'experts' access to special events.

Potential of “fake complete” from helper’s end to get reward

Current design is to have the helper click on complete after the task completion. Users are concerned if a helper doesn’t show up and marks the task complete just to get the reward.

Solution: Require “complete” from both ends

Allow users who receive help to also mark complete tasks or report no-show to reach a full completion. To solve the problem that some users might forget about marking after receiving help, it’s marked complete after three days of no-reaction from both sides.

Onboarding is too long to keep attention

Users lose interest and consider dropping out due to the long onboarding process.

Solution: Employ it only when users encounter a new function

Provide brief introductions on each new page to maintain user engagement and show the steps left.

Users prefer list view for cultural planet

Users find the planet view hard to navigate. Most prefer list view for better usability.

Solution: Make list view the default

Keep planet view as the fun option once users are familiar with the app enough to explore more options

Balancing creativity and usability

Initially, our goal was to create a tool that stood out from competitors, offering an interactive and enjoyable experience to attract new users. However, through feedback sessions, we acknowledged the potential trade-off with usability. We've learned to prioritize functional reasons over mere distinctiveness, understanding that deviating from familiar layouts should serve a purpose aligned with user expectations for a more effective and user-friendly design.

Handling different opinions in a team

As someone naturally inclined toward listening, I've actively worked on enhancing my persuasive communication skills, challenging myself to speak up and engage in constructive debates with my teammates. Recognizing the value of expressing my thoughts, I've learned that disagreements are a natural part of collaboration. I appreciate the unwavering support of my teammates, fostering an environment where everyone's input is valued and heard."

Shouldn’t rely on onboarding process

We should assume most users would skip the onboarding, so we should test how easy our design is without the help with onboarding

Check out my other projects!

MACCI

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Supporting the emotional well-being of children with chronic illness.

Mathworks

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Designing for new migrants, easing both practical and emotional challenges.

Here’s the 1 minute TL;DR version

Challenges: I need some help...

Solution we designed

The process to get here

Survey

Semi-structured Interviews

Who were we designing for

Design

After summarizing our design requirements as shown below, we used the SCAMPER technique of brainstorming and came up with 50+ ideas.

Storyboarding

Sketch ideas

Wireframing ideas

User Feedback and Revision

We conducted one focus session with 4 HCI experts and two individual feedback sessions with target users to gather feedback on the wireframes.

What we found

Final Solution

Final Evaluations

To iterate the prototype and make sure all design is user-centered, we started gathering more feedback by conducting usability testing.

Participants were given three task scenarios: