Solving the Problem of Immigrants and Refugees who come to Brazil to get a Job
How I used UX Design to come up with solutions to help immigrants and refugees to get a job in Brazil
The Challenge
Through the UX Design Professional Certificate promoted by Google, this study case was prepared to practice the knowledge studied in the course.
My role was to be the UX Designer, going through all stages of the project, including:
- User research;
- Conducting qualitative surveys;
- Wireframing;
- Prototyping;
- Conducting usability tests and more.
My challenge was to Design a Dedicated Mobile App and a Responsive Website for helping Immigrants and Refugees to get a job in Brazil.
The Problem
Brazil receives thousands of immigrants and refugees every year, who arrive with difficulties in the language, culture and basic information about jobs and other areas to settle in the country. So, the app/website emerges as a solution to assist on how to request documents, create a resume, prepare for jobs, provide professional, language, culture courses and more.
Develop a viable high-fidelity prototype based on feedback from users within two months.
The Product
A dedicated mobile app and a responsive website to help first generation immigrants get a job. Within the application there are features that help with how to request documents, create a resume, how to prepare for job interviews, apply to partner companies, get professional, language, culture courses and more.
Project duration: From 31 october to 31 december (2 months).
User Research: Qualitative surveys
In order to understand the pains and difficulties faced by immigrants, as well as to understand the process of working/getting work in a foreign country, a qualitative research was carried out. The question flow shows how the survey was organized:
To understand the perspective of refugees, another qualitative research was carried out. This time to be answered by entities that assist in the asylum and refugee adaptation process. It is important to have this distinction between immigrants and refugees, because refugees do not want to leave their country, they do so against their will exclusively to save their lives. Although they are also immigrants, the concept of immigrant is one who migrates from one country to another voluntarily for work, family or to obtain better conditions.
After analyzing some survey responses, a word cloud was generated in two of the most relevant questions. The objective of this approach was to identify patterns in the responses and possible feelings of users.
Question 1: What are/were your biggest difficulties/fears in looking for a job in a foreign country?
Question 2: If you could go back in time and give a tip that would help you through the process of getting a job in a foreign country, what would it be?
It was possible to notice that the biggest fears were those related to language, culture, adaptation and documentation. Based on the advice that would have helped in the process: patience, proactivity, confidence, change, information, and the use of agencies for documentation stood out.
User Research: Pain Points
With the information received from the users, the main pain points were discovered, which were used as guidelines during the project.
- Don’t know the necessary documents: Has difficulty finding how to request basic documents in the destination country.
- Insecurity about language and job interviews: The entire process of applying and getting a job changes from country to country.
- Cannot speak the language properly: Has difficulty with the spoken language in the work environment and in the day to day, especially refugees.
- Fear related to culture and adaptation: The culture of a different country generates countless insecurities in immigrants who arrive in the country. Besides the fear of not being able to adapt.
User Research: Problem Statements and Personas
Persona 1: Maria Vásquez is a MBA graduate who lives with his brother and mother who needs to learn about what it takes to work in a foreign country because she wants to move to work and live abroad, with as little difficulty as possible.
Persona 2: Aisha Al-Rashidi is a refugee who just arrived in a foreign country who needs to learn the language and culture to get a job in the new country because she needs to support her children, joining the community and starting a new life.
User Research: User Journey Maps
Based on the Surveys, Personas and Problem Statements, the User Journey Maps were elaborated in order to understand the user’s routine with the problem and what insights could be obtained at each stage of the process.
Competitive Audit and Solutions Prioritization
A study was carried out analyzing the weaknesses and strengths of direct and indirect competitors. Identifying both positive points (to know where to focus) and negative gaps (to make our product stand out) from the competition.
After coming up with several ideas (from Journey Maps and Competitive Audit), it was necessary to select which ones would generate the greatest impact for the business with the least effort to be carried out. For this, the impact x effort matrix, was used.
Sitemap
A clear organizational structure is key for all users to be able to move through and use our App/website’s design successfully. Sitemaps are a good tool for planning out the architecture behind designs. With that in mind, and in order to organize the hierarchical structure of the product, the following sitemap was created:
Paper Wireframes
At this stage, the selected ideas were materialized through paper wireframes. The screens were designed both for the dedicated mobile and for the responsive website.
Low-Fidelity Prototype and first Usability Test
After creating the main wireframes, it was possible to elaborate the low-fidelity prototype (lo-fi, for short) for the dedicated mobile app. This prototype was used in the first Usability test. If you want to check out the full lo-fi prototype on Figma, just click here (updated version).
With a working lo-fi prototype, a UX Research study plan was created to organize a usability test with users. Some of parameters can be checked below:
- Study type: Usability Study Online — Unmoderated.
- Location: Brazil and Europe, Remote (Using Maze).
- Participants: Six (6).
- Lenght: 10–15 Minutes.
- Metrics (KPI’s): Conversion Rate, User Error Rate, Time on Task and Misclick Rate.
After conducting the usability test with the lo-fi prototype, it was necessary to organize the information obtained. For this we first used a note taking spreadsheet and an affinity diagram (as seen below).
With the organized data, the analysis was done in order to filter and find patterns among user feedbacks, using pattern identification. Lastly, the insight identification was applied to identify the main insights, as shown below:
- Two Buttons with similar functions at account creation: Remove one button and make all the confirmations with the “send button”.
- Enroll courses button is not visible for everyone: Include a button “above the fold” on the screen.
- CV template is hard to find in the app: Include a shortcut on the “documents section”.
- Logout is not 100% intuitive to all users: Include a logout option on the profile section.
Style Guide
After laying out the structure of the project and testing it with users, the next step was to establish the visual identity. Visual elements like colors, typography, buttons, components, inputs, and icons.
For the colors of this project, we opted for a monochromatic palette, with shades of green. The choice of green was based on it’s meaning, according to Eva Heller in “How colors affect feelings and mind”, the color green represents hope and freedom. To confirm the choice of color for the project, before the second usability test we asked: “what is the first color that comes to your mind when you hear the word hope?”, 4 out of 6 participants said the color green (1 said yellow and 1 said blue).
To choose the typography, we looked for two different ones that would match smoothly together. The first choice was Readex Pro, a sober font for titles/headers. The second choice for larger blocks of text and with good readability and legibility, was Roboto Slab. Both typefaces are from Google fonts. You can check out all the variations used for the two typefaces in the next image.
High-Fidelity Prototype and second Usability Test
With a defined visual identity, it was time to create the mockups and make their connections to generate the high-fidelity prototype (hi-fi prototype, for short). You can check the hi-fi prototype in this link.
Following the same steps as the lo-fi prototype, a UX Research Study plan was prepared to then carry out a new usability test. The parameters used can be seen below:
- Study type: Usability Study Online — Unmoderated.
- Location: Brazil and Europe, Remote (Using Maze).
- Participants: Eight (6).
- Lenght: 10–15 Minutes.
- Metrics (KPI’s): Conversion Rate, User Error Rate, Time on Task and Misclick Rate.
The main insights obtained are described in the sequence:
- Shortcuts are hard to notice: Change the font size of the shortcuts that appear at the top-right of the screens.
- Add important contacts section: New screen with relevant contacts to the immigration, work and refuge process.
- Text contrast: Some text elements were difficult to read as they had some shadows, which were removed.
Based on two of the metrics used, Time on Task and Misclick Rate, a large reduction was noticed in the following three tasks, comparing the first and second usability tests:
- Complete the account creation process: reduction of 60% (from 10 to 4) in wrong clicks (misclick) and reduction of 24,44% (from 49,98s to 37,76s) in task execution time.
- Enroll to a course: reduction of 76,28% (from 16,16 to 3,83)in wrong clicks (misclick) and reduction of 82,81% (from 196,2s to 33,71s) in task execution time.
- Find the CV template to download: reduction of 84,78% (from 7,66 to 1,16) in wrong clicks (misclick) and reduction of 66,72% (from 67,66s to 22,51s) in task execution time.
Accessibility Considerations
A Desk research was carried out to see the origin of immigrants and refugees who came to Brazil. Through current government reports, it was seen that the main ones were Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, Haiti, Syria, Cuba and Congo. So, the app/website has been translated into 4 main languages (besides Portuguese): Spanish, French, Arabic and English.
In this case, a great focus was given to the UX Writing part. The Hemingway App tool was used to test the ease of reading the texts (check the next image), the objective was to make the texts readable for people who are in the sixth grade or more (The app evaluates based on the phrases and words used).
Medical notes were made available offline in the application, if the user is not fluent in the doctor’s language, it is possible to keep the notes and translate them. Transcripts of video classes on how to build your CV and prepare for job interviews were also made available on the website.
Next Steps
- Partnership with more companies and local governments would be especially important to be able to “personalize” and meet the needs of immigrants and refugees in each region, given that Brazil is a continent country.
- When handing off to the development team, a meeting would be interesting to align and explain the concepts and elements of the project. This is especially important in order to develop a homogeneous product, checking if the information present in Figma and annotations are sufficient for development.
- After launch, using some business metrics would be essential to continue ensuring user feedback to the product. Tracking user success rates and hiring rates with companies would be especially important, given that getting immigrants a job is one of the best ways to bring them into the community.
Takeaways
- Impact: Brazil receives thousands of immigrants and refugees every year, many of them come in a precarious situation without the basics of culture, language and preparations to look for a job. This project was developed as a proposal to help these people, trying to cover the main pain points raised in the initial researches. Focusing on filling these gaps, thinking of a way to connect immigrants to work, in addition to helping their insertion into the Brazilian community.
- What I learned: During this project I was able to apply new concepts and develop a complete end-to-end project of a dedicated mobile application and a Responsive Website using Figma as a prototyping platform. Some new concepts/tools applied that deserve to be highlighted here were the use of Word Clouds (to identify users’ sentiments after surveys) and Word Analysis (via the Hemingway App). Every design decision was based on studied concepts and mainly on the user.
