Village Exchange Center project: The Research
We collaborated with...
We collaborated with Village Exchange Center (V.E.C.), from the city of Aurora in Colorado, to develop a digital resource guide for the Natural Helper's program. Natural Helpers are immigrants and refugees who have become accustomed to living in the United States and volunteer with V.E.C. to help newer arrivals find the resources and community they need.
The program had a paper version of their resource guide but found frustrations in keeping it updated and distributed to the Natural Helper volunteers. Our team worked with V.E.C. to identify the Natural Helper's needs and translate them into design elements for the digital resource guide.
Below describes our research process. The design portion of the project can be found in more detail here:
Understanding the Refugee and Immigrant Ecosystem
Since the only premise the class had for our project was "helping refugees in Colorado", the first phase consisted of preliminary and secondary research to form a full understanding of Colorado’s refugee and immigrant ecosystem. Together we attended Forced From Home, an interactive, outdoor educational exhibition presented by Doctors Without Borders which was being run in Boulder, CO. This helped us understand the many challenges, fears, and medical needs people encounter in being displaced from their homes. This experience helped our team create empathetic research and design around this difficult issue.
We also attend a local information session for volunteers helping refugees resettle through the Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (a faith based, non-profit human services agency which plays a large role in refugee settlement in CO). We then reached out and interviewed with service providers working in the resettlement process. This is where we began our collaboration with V.E.C. to design for their Natural Helper's program.
Understanding Natural Helpers
Ahmin selling hot sauce
During this time, we observed Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use at a refugee community event, R Bazaar. Our team took note on types of technologies being used as well as speaking with refugee/immigrant participants to better understand their needs and feelings towards technologies.
Our team developed a PATH (Problem, Approach, Targets, Humanity) statement:
“As the immigrant/refugee community in Denver grows, established immigrants/refugees and neighborhood leaders lack easy access to relevant, up-to-date, vetted and accurate information on services. We will create a central digital hub of information, resources, and training that is accessible and modifiable by Natural Helpers (i.e. community members) and the service community, in order for leaders to provide trusted and true sources of information while having a sense of ownership over their role as a bridge between these communities.”
V.E.C. then introduced us to some of their Natural Helper volunteers for further interviewing. We interviewed four Natural Helpers about their role as a Natural Helper Volunteer, their use of the guide booklet and other resources, and their familiarity with ICTs.
Analysis through Affinity Mapping
We used affinity mapping to understand the larger themes within our findings. We found four design nuances that emerged from our Natural helper population:
A need for community feedback
- The resettlement ecosystem has many moving parts. Service details and offerings change over time. Specific locations, hours of services, and events can be difficult to track. One thing that makes the Natural Helper's program so effective is it's ability to communicate changes.
Flexible service categorization
- The physical resource booklet listed providers under their respected categories such as healthcare or education services, but many providers can be listed under multiple categories due to an array of services. Several interviewees mentioned confusion when using the booklet for finding services as they were not sure which category to begin searching under.
Password lapse considerations
- A specific need that arose from the Natural Helper population was to understand location relevance. A factor in choosing a service was the users ability to travel there easily and in a timely manner. According to our interviews, most Natural helpers and the new refugee and immigrant arrivals they work with rely on public transportation services.
The need for locational context
- The Natural Helpers also faced the issue of password recall. Existing online resources utilized one password for all Natural Helpers to access forms, which was frequently forgotten. Both V.E.C. staff and Natural Helpers were dissatisfied with the current system; Natural Helpers with difficulties in password recall and staff with sending constant reminders.
We held these considerations, along with those from service provider stakeholders when designing our prototypes. More on the design process can be found here.
User Testing
In prepping our user testing sessions for our digital prototype we creating sets of tasks for both Natural Helpers and V.E.C. Staff. We used think aloud protocol as users performed their set of tasks in the prototype. We held two rounds of user testing, two weeks apart.
Impact
This project brought to light many issues that a user experience researcher and designer may face. Our team constrained and focused a broad overarching question of "How can we apply technology to help refugees in Colorado?" to identifying stakeholders and programs, specific needs and areas technology to could be applied, and designing for a specific user group within the community (Natural Helpers). We overcame ambiguity, gained trust with our partners, and designed an end product which Village Exchange Center forwarded to their developer for implementation.
Writing about the work was published in the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference June 2018 under the title "Using Experiential-Learning and Iterative Design to Benefit Colorado's Refugees".