USA Helping Hands

The Client:

USA Helping Hands

The Project:

USA Helping Hands is a student-visa immigration app that helps users with the immigration process with a streamlined application process that includes real time status updates, an application system that’s simple and easy, legal services to answer any questions, and a mentorship program that creates a career plan in collaboration with the student through graduation. Our design challenge was to do this by eliminating all the steps that users found frustrating and stressful like the lack of support and no real-time updates on applications.

MY ROLE

Researcher

•

UX/UI Designer

•

Prototyping and Wireframing

•

User Tester

•

Researcher • UX/UI Designer • Prototyping and Wireframing • User Tester •

Pain Points

  • Lack of support for government websites is causing people to be frustrated

  • Not knowing a timeline for document approval process is stressful

  • Simple errors making users start a long process over from the beginning

  • “I don’t really know about the system, but I think the process can be faster. There’s a lot of families stuck in Vietnam. They were supposed to be here two years ago."

    Kyle N.

Secondary Research

  • Why is it worth it to solve this problem?

    Immigration is a life-altering process and to give people a piece of mind with a firm timeline and actual streamlined process would save a lot of frustration and stress from potential immigrants

  • What is this problem really causing people?

    Uncertainty and frustrating at the process

  • What's the need?

    There’s a need for a process that helps students begin their immigration process, help with paperwork and answers from industry professionals, a process where errors are caught before your application is submitted, and a mentorship program that helps students land a career and start a life in the United States

  • Lack of services

    There are four websites that are not run by the government that offer services for immigrants in search for a career. Two of the websites are bound to states (Indiana and Minnesota), so that leaves two websites that are national. Two sites to handle the flow of immigrants looking for a career is lackluster.

  • First-generation woes

    It’s difficult for citizens or immigrants that have been in the United States workforce for years to land a job, let alone start a career. Now add not being able to speak the not common language or maybe not having the proper education to even get an interview.

  • Strict laws

    Florida is a state where immigrants come into the United States. Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law SB1718, where it restricts services for undocumented immigrants. The backlash for the new law has swept through Florida and immigrant workers have left the state.

Competitor Analysis

Currently there isn’t an organization that’ll take immigrants from the application process all the way to finding a career. There are three organizations that work similarly to USA Helping Hands; Upwardly Global, USAHello, and Immigrant Welcome Center are all organizations that help immigrants from education, working with established companies that will help apply your skills to US based companies to helping immigrants within a certain area in the United States.

  • Upwardly Global is an organization that helps immigrants and refugees with international credentials restart their careers in the United States. They work with people who want to immigrate to the United States but are also qualified to work for companies in the United States.

  • USAHello is a non-profit organization that uses technology to connect immigrant communities with information and resources they need to thrive. USAHello offers a ton of resources for potential immigrants to familiarize themselves with the immigration process and resources to get the process started. They also have resources to obtain a GED and offer citizenship preparation courses.

  • Immigrant Welcome Center serves Indianapolis, Indiana and provides all the necessary help for immigrants that immigrated to Indianapolis. They provide information to organizations that provide legal help, medical care, housing assistance and more.

The three companies that’s listed were put through a heuristic competitor analysis. I decided to do my project on helping first-generation immigrants start a career but wanted the organization to start the process from the immigration process because organizations will help immigrants post approval. Services don’t offer help with the forms. There are websites that link to forms but don’t take you through the process. We’ll be looking at the visibility of system status, match between system and the real world, and the aesthetic and minimalist design. The rating system will range from a scale from 1 to 5.

1 = Extremely Poor

2 = Poor but shows room for improvement

3 = Mediocre, average

4 = Good, could improve some areas

5 = Great, little flaws

Visibility of System Status:

  • Upwardly Global

    Rating: 5

    Upwardly Global has put together a website that is easy to access, pages are clean and concise, and there’s clear action items on every page. Users know what pages they’re on and what to do for every page. There’s a lot of information on the website and the drop down menu helps categorize information very well. It’s a lot of information that you need hours to navigate through and that’s a good thing because of how complex immigration and career services are for immigrants.

  • USAHello

    Rating: 5

    USAHello’s site is easy to navigate and the header at the top of every page tells you exactly where you are. Like Upwardly Global, USAHello’s site has a lot of information and they provide a lot of services from links to obtain a GED, finding a job, and laws in the United States. The simple banner at the top of every page makes all the difference.

  • Immigrant Welcome Center

    Rating: 4

    The layout of the website for Immigrant Welcome Center is vibrant with color but some of the call-to-action items repeat and it clogs up space, especially on the homepage.

Match Between System and the Real World:

  • Upwardly Global

    Rating: 4

    Wording and phrasing on Upwardly Global is simple and concise. A lot of the website is broken down into bulleted points but there are sections where there’s a lot of paragraphs that are long to read. Phrasing is also very key since users are immigrants and not all languages are available for translation.

  • USAHello

    Rating: 4

    Most of the site's lends and terminology is simple and easy to understand. The example below shows “TPS/DED” under the immigration menu. I think a simple expansion of the menu and writing out “Temporary Protected Status” and “Deferred Enforced Departure” would go a long way so users don’t click on it to see what it means.

  • Immigrant Welcome Center

    Rating: 5

    The language of the website and communication is very clear. IWC uses a lot of icons that make sense and communicates very well to its users on its action items. It’s put together very well.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design:

  • Upwardly Global

    Rating: 4

    For the most part, Upwardly Global doesn’t have too much clutter. There is a lot of information on the home page. Users do have to scroll through the home page for a decent while to get all the information. Because of the importance of the content, there’s a lot to digest. Upwardly Global does a good job of keeping most of the pages very clean and easy to read. Below is an example of repeated information. There are two contact us portions on the page. I think eliminating the blue blocked portion could free up a lot of space on the page. Examples like that are minimal on the website but visible.

  • USAHello

    Rating: 3

    The design itself is decent. There’s a lot of repetitive areas in USAHello. As shown below, the dropdown menu’s offer a lot of options but right below that you have the explore section that is already present in the dropdown menu section. To declutter some of the homepage, they could simply eliminate either the dropdown or the explore that is repetitive.

  • Immigrant Welcome Center

    Rating: 3

    As talked about in the visibility systems status, the aesthetic and minimalist design repeats. The style serves the site well but as shown below, events show up three times on the homepage. This suggests events are a key part of the organization but rather than having it appear three times, you could make it more prominent on the homepage and eliminate repeats.

  • “If you can have someone to talk to and lean on while because that process is very hard. You can’t really discuss that with other people because unless you’re going through the same situation, nobody really cares.

    Gabin K.

  • “It’s annoying me because it took 14 years for the process. It separates families.”

    Kyle N.

  • “I don’t think the actual process like the paperwork is hard. I think my biggest frustration with the process is not having a perfect timeline for things is very frustrating. I think they can be more efficient. Maybe have an option for people to do it either online or in person.”

    Dayoung Y.

Affinity Map:

To make sense of all of that date collected from interviews and secondary research. We created an affinity board put a visual together for all the data we gathered from our interviews. The results were surprising. What we learned after creating the affinity map was that all three participants felt generally the same about the immigration process. The scores out of 10 were 4, 4, 5.

Empathy Map:

We created an empathy to see how our users were feeling when they were in the immigration process. While conducting an empathy map, we discovered the areas where we could provide improvement and a streamlined service. There are gaps where we can fill and better help the user. All three participants felt frustrated with the process. They mentioned it was stressful and felt the process was way too long. They said there was no real timeline and help was hard to get ahold of.

  • Dayoung Y.

  • Gabin K.

  • Kyle N.

Personas:

We created personas to put together a realistic representation of our key user base. Most of the time the users made the choice to immigrate to find a better life and be with their family. All three participants came over and stayed in the United States for a better opportunity. Family, quality of life, and happiness were key components to immigration. We found out our users went through the frustration and stress of immigration because of the hope that their life would be better in the United States.

How Might We:

 Immigration can be a frustrating and stressful process. We wanted to take a look at where the pain points stem from and where we could start tackling the problems.

How might we relieve frustration when people are waiting for their immigration status to change?

How might we make users feel like they have all their information they need?

How might we provide support for people waiting for the immigration process to be completed?

How might we make an error process quick and responsive?

How might we make users feel confident they are completing and submitting their immigration forms correctly?

“The process is so complicated. The people who want to bring you over to the US have to be 21-years old, they have to be financially stable. That’s a lot of things to prepare. Not only the people in US but the people in Vietnam to prepare the paperwork.” - Kyle N.

“The process is so complicated. The people who want to bring you over to the US have to be 21-years old, they have to be financially stable. That’s a lot of things to prepare. Not only the people in US but the people in Vietnam to prepare the paperwork.” - Kyle N.

User Story:

We’re creating a user story to show what journey our users need to take to complete the task they’re setting out to do. The results were pretty complex. Even though our goal was to create a site that required the minimal amount of steps for the user to complete their journey, there were more steps that were required than expected.

The insights we drew from completing the user stories was that we wanted to try and make the process easy and it turned out that the user story made it pretty linear.

User Flow:

We created user flows to show the journey of the user and what they would need to do to complete their tasks. The results of the user flow shows how complex a user can be. There’s a lot that goes into even a simple linear website. We gained a lot of insights with the user flow. To complete a simple task involves multiple steps so attention to detail is important and critical when designing the website.

User Journey:

What was the journey users need to take to complete these tasks that were essential to ease their pain points?

Sketches:

We came up with a lot of potential screens for our app and gave us a good idea on how we want our app to look like. Having sketches to work with gave us a foundation for our app. It laid out how we want things to look and where we would place certain features.

Low Fidelity Mockup:

  • Splash Page

  • Home

  • Immigration

  • Status

  • Services

  • Contact

  • Schedule

High Fidelity Mockup:

We created a decluttered student immigration design that focused on solving the frustration of users and streamlined the services that included a visual of their application status, a fail-safe service that double checks any documents for missing information, and a mentorship program that provides a career path for its students. We learned that language is a big part of what we need to express. We want to take as few screens as possible to describe what services we provide. Many users didn’t understand what our organization was providing so we had to iterate a few times before the final product.

Prototype

Prototype

What did I learn??

Dayoung Y.

“Nothing is really clear…There are people out there that have waited for years and others that applied and got approved in a few months.”