Yimmigrant
The Challenge
Inequality within Immigrant Families in the United States
Because newer generations of many immigrant families assimilate into American culture more quickly than first-generation members, differences in values often create generational divides. These divisions between immigrant family members across generations and among members of the same generation highlight the growing importance and urgency of tools for first-generation immigrants to understand local politics.
Personas
Kenji
Client
Google UX Design Course
Year
2024
Duration
1 Month
Platform
Responsive Website
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
My Role(s)
UX Designer
As a UX designer, I designed wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes for Yimmigrant's responsive website. As the device screen becomes smaller, the web interface will automatically make corresponding adjustments to provide users with a good experience.
Project Manager & UX Researcher
As a project manager, I set specifications and ensure product development is aligned with the services and mission of non-profit organizations such as CISC (Seattle). Moreover, I investigated first-generation immigrants’ expectations, needs, motivations, and behaviors regarding local political apps.
Executive Summary
Goal
Motivating first-generation immigrants to understand local politics, increase their willingness to assimilate into American culture, and empower immigrant family members by encouraging them to participate in local politics.
Solutions
Yimmigrant is a responsive website that helps first-generation immigrants understand and learn local politics in order to allow them to be more confidently integrate into American culture.
Age: 74
Kenji is from Shizuoka, Japan and his life was dominated by work. Kenji and his children have huge value differences, and he struggles with how to mend the rift in his family relationship.
“I'm tired of using work to avoid family responsibilities, but is there a website that allows me to simply understand American local politics and values?“
Education: BS in Civil Engineering
Occupation: Retired Civil Engineer
Status: Married with four children
Location: Orange, CA
Bio:
Pop-Up User Research
My research methods included:
The who, what, where, when, and why did first-generation immigrants learn local politics.
How did the first-generation immigrants identify with local politics?
Design
Wireflow
Ideation
Initial Concepts
Translation
Volunteers will translate website content into different languages to serve the vast first-generation immigrant community.
Status: Married with one young child
After graduating with a master's degree, Ching-Chuan and her husband immigrated to the United States, and she took care of her infant daughter at home. Due to an extreme lack of confidence in her English skills, Ching-Chuan is afraid to leave her house and feels hesitant to understand local politics.
“I want to understand local politics in the United States but I cannot read complex English terminology and articles.”
Ching-Chuan
Age: 39
Education: Master of Arts
Occupation: Housewife
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Bio:
Abdullah moved to the United States from Calcutta, India with his family and obtained a PharmD-MBA and became a pharmacist. Abdullah discovered that he had no idea who the legislators represented his city and he didn't know where to start.
“If there is a website that could help me understand more about local politics and communities, I would be willing to participate in more community activities and contribute to them.
Abdullah
Age: 56
Education: PharmD-MBA
Occupation: Pharmacist
Status: Married with three children
Location: Covington, WA
Bio:
The article difficulty indicator can help first-generation immigrants identify the complexity of the knowledge covered in the article and help them adjust their reading priorities to avoid giving up due to frustration.
I conducted 20 interviews via Zoom with first-generation immigrants. My target audience ranges in age from 31 to 74 years old and has different living situations (i.e. married, with parents, living alone). I wrote an interview guide for this project, which revolves around the five main stages of local political education: orientation, prioritization, breakthrough, immersion, and internalization. My questions prompted participants to talk about their experiences, specifically their pain points and the impact that knowing more or less about local politics impacted their assimilation into American culture.
Contextual Interviews
Affinity diagramming
Speed Dating
Stakeholder diagramming
Journey mapping
Usability testing
Experience Prototyping
Questions from Research
What tools and methods are successful in increase immigrants’ willingness to learn local politics?
How do first-generation immigrants understand and feel about local politics?
02. Device Screen Size and Fonts
Among first-generation immigrants, more than one-third (35%) of older adults, who were born before 1985, said they own a tablet, and font size on devices such as mobile phones is one of their main concerns.
04. Bookmarking and Note-taking
Regardless of age, first-generation immigrants need bookmark and note-taking functions so that they can read articles multiple times or take some time to digest knowledge.
If first-generation immigrants forget to select one or more options on the category and theme personalization pages, they are less likely to go back to the previous page and make changes. In contrast, first-generation immigrants tend to understand the definitions of categories and topics before changing personalization options on the settings page.
As a UX designer, I define core functionality, build experience journeys, and construct the information architecture between users and the nonprofit organization (YMG) through different narrative models.
After collecting interview data and creating user journey maps, I summarized the following six initial concepts. These concepts represent pain points and potential solutions for first-generation immigrants using Yimmigrant’s service.
03. Language Support
Among first-generation immigrants, people aged 50 to 74 have more needs for native language translation than people in other age groups, while first-generation immigrants aged 31 to 49 regard native language translation as an auxiliary function to help them read.
Unexpected Research Findings:
For first-generation immigrants, an early-stage personalized survey can assist the system in recommending articles in categories and topics that better suit their needs.
User Journey Maps
User Research Insights
01. Terminology Explanation
First-generation immigrants expected the site to provide explanations of terms in articles and news pages similar to those found on the website of Encyclopedia Britannica.
The following two user journey maps summarize some of the findings and user experiences I learned during the interviews.
Personalized Survey
Through users’ answers, AI can provide first-generation immigrants with the categories and topics of news and articles that best meet their needs through deep learning.
Popup Explanations
When a first-generation immigrant clicks on a specific term in an article, a small window will appear under the term to display its brief definition, allowing first-generation immigrants to quickly understand its meaning.
Fact Check
News and information vetted by volunteers and community participants will help first-generation immigrants avoid the traps set by troll farms on social media and apps.
User Flow
Site Map
Stakeholder Feedbacks and Iterations
01. Narrative Images are Efficient
Insight: People have more emotional resonance with narrative images.
Validation: Narrative images make users more willing to learn about local politics on Yimmigrant because they can illustrate the focus of the article or the meaning of the topic. Users project themselves into narrative images and learn in an immersive way.
Nonprofit Organization Collaboration
In addition to answering questions about local politics for first-generation immigrants, NPOs can also assist them with broader issues, such as health insurance, legal consultation, and social welfare applications.
Screen Readers
These assistive technologies allow users to select specific text for narration, adjust the reading speed of selected text, and select different voices in a variety of languages, including English and Mandarin.
02. Mobile First
I designed Yimmigrant to provide a unique American local political learning experience suitable for every first-generation immigrant with different personalities and preferences, through various functions to assist and encourage reading.
Considering that first-generation immigrants have different habits and needs, Yimmigrant allows users of all backgrounds to start at different stages. Over time, a personalized survey can deliver news and articles tailored to the categories and topics that users are interested in based on their responses. Users can also browse the web to understand their needs and literacy levels before conducting a personalized survey or using accessibility features such as screen readers.
During the usability testing, I collected feedbacks from stakeholders and summarized four main improvement points for creating further prototype iterations and final design.
Final Solution
03. Communication is Crucial
Ensure a safe and low-frustration place for self-learning.
Provide actions and activities that are passive and active.
Design Principles
Promote political understanding and community collaboration.
Make users feel recognized and respected.
Reflection
Optimize the process based on usability testing
The plight of users does not necessarily come from the fact that the website does not reflect their needs, but that the website do not provide clear guidance for users to go to the page they want to visit or perform the correct action. Given the high proportion of users who are positively affected by the changes, I imported a deep learning AI system into web patterns to allow a personalized survey to provide customized guidance and instructions to users based on their habits, preferences, and learning patterns, rather than conducting traditional questionnaires.
Ensure Cross-platform Compatibility
In order to design Yimmigrant's responsive website, I researched the screen sizes, resolutions, input methods, and operating systems of the devices my users most commonly use, such as mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. The design should be consistent on different platforms, and the function buttons and menus need to be slightly modified in display according to the screen size to ensure that users can have a pleasant experience.
More is Not Always Better
When I was conceiving the initial concepts and functions of the responsive website, I used to think that providing more services to users would be good for them. However, usability surveys indicate that overcomplicated functionality not only ruins the user experience, but also makes them need to perform more actions to achieve their goals, which leads to many people giving up halfway through trying to figure out how to use it.
Insight: People tend to use their phones to read news and articles and fill out the personalized survey on their computers.
Validation: The convenience of mobile phones allows users to read articles anytime and anywhere, but the limitations of mobile phone screens make users use screen readers. They are more likely to use tablets to take notes and computers to conduct the personalized survey.
Manage Your Study Space
Each first-generation immigrant has different study habits that structure their digital learning space. Conducting personalized surveys, reading local political news and articles, learning what local politics is, and participating in local community activities with Yimmigrant’s services; therefore, you can integrate into American society in the way that best suits you.
Insight: Since learning local politics in the United States with the helps of AI and assistive technology is a rare concept for first-generation immigrants, I should focus on better communication of ideas and details.
Validation: Although users liked the concept, they were still unfamiliar with how to educate themselves on local U.S. politics on Yimmigrant. Due to a lack of previous experience, users felt that the program's information could be presented more clearly and with more explanation of settings, such as how to conduct the personalized survey, how to use a screen reader, and how to change reading difficulty settings.
04. Keep it Simple
Insight: Users prioritize a seamless and efficient personalized survey process.
Validation: Users found the five-session personalized survey to be effective but lacking in instructions. Some recommend providing instructions on the personalized survey as well as the questions themselves so users can quickly understand how to provide effective responses and avoid frustration that leads to abandonment.
Let AI Read it to You
Being able to listen to local political news in your own native language is the best way to absorb knowledge more efficiently. Yimmigrant uses artificial intelligence algorithms to improve screen reader accuracy so you can listen to local political news and articles in your preferred language and speaking speed.
Customized for You
Issues of concern will change over time. With Yimmigrant, you can re-take the personalized survey to adjust your reading level, topics of interest, and categories of frustration, and AI will use deep learning to provide you with the best arrangements of reading and learning in local politics that corresponds to your needs.