Safe Haven
Decades of conflict in Afghanistan have contributed to a growing global refugee crisis
where Afghan men, women, and children have left their home country
because of war, natural disaster, or political upheaval, resettle in the United States.
While aid is scattered and hard to find, there exists a major opportunity
for communities to work alongside local refugee relief
organizations and government agencies to support and welcome resettled individuals and families.
In response, Safe Haven is a digital volunteer board application that aims to bridge the
disconnect between resources available to support Afghan refugees
and individuals who want to help those in transition. The digital screens
are situated in high traffic, high visibility bus shelters as a way of bringing opportunities to the community.
Design Question
How might we foster community building between Afghan refugees and the larger Seattle community to improve refugee resettlement experiences?
Solution
Surveys taught us that locals have seen breaking news about the crisis
in Afghanistan but feel uninformed about
the subsequent refugee displacement. While our audience of young professionals do not seek
out ways to help, they are open to doing so if the opportunity presents itself.
By placing touch-screen kiosks at bus stops where people are already waiting, users are able to learn more
and provide support in a manner and location that is convenient to them.
Discovery
We began the project by conducting semi-structured interviews
coupled with surveys with adults who are aware of the refugee
crisis and have an interest in volunteering to understand their time, and
involvement, and transportation concerns as it relates to organizations
supporting incoming refugees.
The data represented a disconnect between action and intention thus
leading me to consider designing for behavior change.
User Research
We also conducted interviews with volunteers
and caseworkers from refugee relief organizations such as International
Rescue Committee (IRC) and Jewish Family Services (JFS) to participate
in discovery interviews before conducting a Competative Analysis
to find existing solutions within this space.
While job boards and
volunteer portals exist for official nonprofits, those who have gotten
involved did so after a call to action from someone in their network. Our
target
audience
consists of people
willing to help incoming refugees but are not actively
looking for opportunities nor are they connected with the refugee community.
Stakeholders
Combining findings from multiple user research methods using an affinity diagram,
my team broke down findings into topics to select the scope of our project. After
deciding to focus on the issue of low awareness around ways to help asylum seekers, we organized our
stakeholders into two groups: potential volunteers and existing organizations.
I created two personas that embodied the archetypes of
our user groups. I then mapped out the user journey of our primary persona,
Casey, including her thoughts and feelings surrounding news coverage about the crisis in Afghanistan.
From this, I was able to empathize with Casey's schedule and where she can offer support.
Specifications
Using the research and synthesis as a guideline, we summarized
our findings with the following problem statement
and intentions for our solution:
How might we for behavior change and change will into
action for those hearing about the Afghan refugee crisis
and open to offering support?
Ideation
With the design requirements in mind, we began to ideate on potential
solutions through sketches and storyboards.
We decided that while a
convenient solution, an app does not reach our target audience without
strong marketing. Knowing that we wanted to encourage a behavior change,
we considered how a kiosk at a bus stop could help people evalute their
opportunities while they wait for their ride.
We also bucketed the design requirements as feature
components using a flow chart to form the backbone of our kiosk experience. The two pathways are further explained using sitemaps.
"Learn" Pathway
Users can select between two education paths: (1) 10 Facts About the Afghan Refugee Crisis or (2) Story of the First 90 days. Users can swipe or tap on arrows to move through slides to learn about the refugee experience and how they fit into the picture.
"Get Involved" Pathway
In the ‘Get Involved’ screen, users can filter by and discover opportunities based on their preferences, as well as time commitment and experience. Each filter’s page provides a selection of opportunity cards, which can be individually expanded to present more details about the opportunities.
Wireframes
Early wireframes included a homescreen offering the three pathways of learn, take action, and donate.
"Learn" included two stories of 10 slides each while "take action"
(which was renamed to "get involved") displayed a set of opportunity cards
which could be filtered according to different types of support.
P.S. You can get a better zoom on Figma.
My team and I further
considered the feasability of a donation option. I was considering different designs for the kiosk hardware as
well as the digital screens but we came to the concensus that security at a publicly
accessible kisok would put the user at risk (in more ways then one).
We did not want to add a kiosk to the card reader for safety reasons. Knowing that over
90% of our discovery survey respondants were inclined to donate money, we decided to make
to continue the experience from a
mobile device where donations would be safer and the experience could be
continued while on public transport.
Usability Testing
The Safe Haven team sought to test and validate the core ‘Get Involved’
pathway of the digital board with five participants. The goals of the testing
focused on the screen-to-screen experience from the initial default ‘Home’ to
‘Opportunities’ screen to discover usability improvements.
As a result, we made four design changes: First, the header text
was adjusted and learning content added to the
home screen to provide context for users to help grab the attention of users while
drawing them into both ‘Learn’ and ‘Get Involved’ pathways with information to lay
the groundwork.
Second, the search bar within the "Get Involved" pathway was removed to reduce
complexity. Third, to add clarity to the QR code section, text was adjusted from
"share with my phone" to "continue with my phone." Finally, a label was added to
draw attention to filters.
Mockup
Deliverables
In addition to viewing our video prototype, you can also download a pdf of our team's design solution.
Reflection
At the outset, my team and I were hesitant to pursue a project on the ongoing crisis
because of the langage barrier and packed schedule of stakeholders. Unanimously, however, we chose to pursue purposeful, impact-driven work.
While not without its challenges, choosing this path was immensely rewarding, both in the experiences it
led to and the lessons learned from those experiences. Among those lessons, maybe the
most important was that the value of human-centered design is not just in the creation
of more appropriate and usable design solutions that result from the involvement of
users, but in the generative power of design as a process to bring together diverse
stakeholders in pursuit of more inspiring and inclusive futures.
Stakeholders wanted to help us help the communities they serve.