Exploring refugees’ employment-seeking experiences in NYC to design a digital solution

Design Research, User Research, UX Design, Startup, Migration, Refugees, Professional Development

Introduction

The Columbia Design Studio is Columbia University’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship. It enables individuals to employ user-centered methodologies for developing innovative, practical solutions to ill-defined problems. They teach human-centered design principles: gaining deep, critical human insights and integrating them into products, services, and businesses. The Design Studio encourages innovators to explore and understand the needs of users, reframe complex challenges, build and test concepts with agile methods, and design viable solutions.

I studied with the Design Studio from September to December 2017, where I learned and applied these design-thinking principles in researching, building and iterating a digital prototype. I worked on a team of four including myself and my colleagues, Shanna Crumley, Amna Malik, and Kareem Traboulsi. We had the privilege of learning with leaders in entrepreneurship, communicating our research and design to numerous colleagues for individualized feedback, working in an agile and collaborative environment, and presenting our product in a final pitch to a board of investors.

The Challenge

My teammates and I had all worked in the migration and humanitarian sector in some capacity before studying at the Design Studio, and knew that we wanted to tackle the challenges refugee communities faced in their new environments. Studies reported that nearly 50% of job-seeking refugees remained unemployed up to two years after relocation. We wanted to dive into refugees’ experiences to discover the challenges they faced in the job-hunt and design a viable solution.

Approach & Process

Interview + POV Statement

We began reaching out to contacts in our network—refugees, migrants, academics, NGO representatives—to get more insight around the problem. Specifically with refugees, we sought to understand their employment-seeking processes, behaviors, and sentiments, exploring what tactics they used for searching out jobs and presenting their qualifications, and other aspects of employment such as their education, professional backgrounds, and networks. We conducted two rounds of roughly 15-20 interviews each to define, test, and refine our problem statement. The insights we gleaned enabled us design a human-centered solution and ideate possible approaches.

Competitive Analysis

Another large focus of the Design Studio process was the business model, to ensure that concepts were competitively viable. We researched companies providing resettlement services, recruiting services, and professional development services. Our goals from this competitive analysis were to inform our own ideation process, know how to better focus our brand, and learn from strengths and weaknesses of other products. We compiled a list of both direct and indirect competitors, reviewed their services, brand, media platforms, content, and competitive advantage. The competitive analysis gave us a much better understanding of the market and its actors, and helped us carve out a clearer vision of our product and where it fit in the market.

Wireframe + Usability Testing

Our initial wireframes were just sketches, rough ideas and features that we eventually translated into a digital mockup. We created two variations that showcased cosmetic design differences and tested these (on paper) with 11 individuals. Activities in usability testing ranged from gathering feedback on the language, content, interface, and specific visual differences between variations. We also asked users to walk through certain activities to record their end-to-end interaction and performance with various tools. This allowed our team to develop a deeper understanding of needs that were unmet, difficulties across the platform, and users’ sentiments toward the product.

Synthesis & Impact

Testing our initial prototype was key—our findings revealed that we actually needed to iterate on a much more core aspect of the entire product, a critical takeaway. Contact me to find out all about the research insights, ideas, processes, and my personal lessons from the experience.

Thank you to my wonderful teammates, the brilliant advisers at the Design Studio, and all the individuals who shared their precious experiences with us.