PROJECT OVERVIEW
A refrain heard frequently from ex-pats worldwide is that in deciding to move to an entirely new country, their research never provided them with "insider knowledge" that would not only help hasten their acculturation into their new home country but reduce the culture shock and stress associated with immigration.
The goal of this project is to design an app that is geared towards helping immigrants adapt to their new homeland and form natural conversations with natives.
We achieved this by making an app that uses pop culture to teach about a country's culture and society.
MY ROLE
I was the principal UX researcher, copywriter, and prototyper. I tasked myself with architecting and shaping the end-to-end creation and experience of an app that would hopefully help to answer the question of how one could hasten acculturation and reduce the effects of culture shock for new arrivals.
THE PROBLEM
Managing culture shock and immersion in another society requires acquiring new cultural knowledge and skills that go beyond what is currently available on the market.
The information that is out there is normally anecdotal, varying in reliability and piecemeal.
How might we provide relevant content to help immigrants acculturate and familiarize themselves with a country’s popular culture ?
THE APPROACH
Immersing Ourselves In Research
To better understand the problem space, I performed literature reviews to assess the resources currently available to new arrivals. The over whelming majority of information available regarding immigration, assimilation and education are all focused on children.
However we saw merit in the findings and determined that the suggestions brought forth for acclimating to a new home country could be adapted to improve feature offerings on our app while also being appealing to both adults and children.
Information that veered away from traditional sources were derived from message boards, Youtube, and Facebook groups.
Common sentiments shared amongst the message board participants are the fact there is no central repository for knowledge, they were looking more for colloquial as opposed to book related knowledge, resources did not exist in their communities to assist them and a lot of the information they received from the message boards while extremely helpful were not always 100% accurate.
There is no official program assisting new immigrants. You get no money, no housing, no food. It’s all up to you now. That’s the American way.
Key Takeaways:
-
Differences in attitude and expectations affect adjustment in a new country.
-
Adjustment to a new country is affected by access to support services.
-
Don't try and pressure new arrivals into fully integrating in their new society.
-
Information provided should be vetted and accurate and should also be provided in languages other than English.
-
Centralizing and publicizing non-common knowledge information would be most helpful.
WHO ARE THE COMPETITORS?
I searched around to find out what apps may exist that are geared towards helping immigrants acculturate while providing them with local knowledge of their new homeland.
Three apps were identified; FindHello, SettleIn, & Homeis. Each app has its pros and cons and my goal was to take inspiration from the positive attributes of all three to inform the creation and offerings of the
app.
Settle In
Pros:
-
Easy to use interface.
-
Up to 6 users on the same account.
Cons:
-
Content is aimed solely at refugees and not to non-refugee immigrants.
FindHello
Pros:
-
Available in both web and app formats.
-
Information is downloadable.
Cons:
-
Difficult to use.
-
Only available in 3 languages.
Homeis
Pros:
-
Created by immigrants for immigrants.
-
Has a growing presence in Canada and the U.S.
Cons
-
Content isn't clearly explained.
-
Geared towards South Asian communities.
DISCOVERY
To obtain further insight into the problem question, I interviewed industry experts and my targeted user base.
My industry expert, Erica S. a former international student advisor with Rutgers University and an expat herself currently living in South Korea identified seven key areas that international students encounter while trying to assimilate to life in the U.S.
Of the seven, she highlighted the main issues connecting all of the international students were language barrier, access to social media platforms, and mental health.
USER INTERVIEWS
I conducted user interviews to gain further insights into the needs of my target audience. Focus was placed on trying to understand what their pain points were when they first arrived in the U.S. or Canada.
How they eventually acclimated to their new surroundings and what resources they wished they'd had access to prior to or upon arriving?
Knowing about history, politics, and current events makes you feel more committed to your community. It also helps you get more involved socially; people bond when they realize that they have shared interests
The key takeaways from my interviews were that there was a huge sense of culture shock, frustration over not knowing how to access resources and a desire to find a core community to help with feelings of loneliness.
SEEKING ANALOGOUS INSPIRATION
I sought to validate the information received via the user and expert interviews by seeking out resources associated with expat life. Most of the information was gathered from Youtube and Facebook community pages.
What I found was that despite the source, the issues highlighted were still similar if not the same as what the interview groups brought up.
EXPLORING OPPORTUNITIES
How might we...
-
help immigrants cope with feelings of stress and loneliness in an unfamiliar country?
-
provide relevant content to help immigrants form natural conversations and familiarize them with the country’s popular culture?
-
connect immigrants who have gone through similar experiences to share information and build relationships?
ALIGNING EXPERT AND USER INSIGHTS
After interviewing potential users and industry experts, I developed the user persona. The service storyboard was used as the conceptual theme for the proposed app and the subsequent prototype.
USER PERSONA
We created a user persona, Ali Leung based on our aggregate research. The majority of individuals interviewed for this project were females of Asian descent in their early 20s.
We also made this persona a first generation immigrant and a student as most of our interviewees stated that they were the first in their family to leave their home country and that they immigrated to either the U.S. or Canada to complete graduate level course work.
The pain points identified for this persona were communication barriers, feeling limited in her general cultural knowledge of her new home country, and finding a community to feel accepted by.
Communication barrier Frustration
Navigating her new home country
Frustation
First Generation Asian Female Immigrant
Status
23 years old
Age
Graduate Student Occupation
Assimilate into new culture but still maintain close ties with her culture.
Goal
Access information that is accurate
Goal
Place mouse over image to hover and see pain points
TURNING BROAD CONCEPTS INTO UX SOLUTIONS
We generated a broad range of ideas and turned the sketches into design mocks and flows. In several rounds, we tested our prototypes, observed users interacting with them, listened to their likes and dislikes.
Pictured below are early concept designs for the Culturetalk app. After we validated our concepts and assumptions, we applied the visual branding elements that we created via our mood board.
USER FLOW
Sorting out navigation and flow
After defining the main flow of onboarding, it was time to step back and see how it all fits into the big picture. The navigation was designed so that all the main steps are easily accessible as tabs on a single screen.
YOU ARE MY INSPIRATION
Color Palette, Mood Board, Style Guide & Typography
MOODBOARD
We took inspiration for the look and feel of the app from this candy corn image. We wanted vibrant colors that also played into the theme of learning.
COLOR PALETTE & TYPOGRAPHY
The color palette is a mix of oranges, yellows, blacks, and grays. The main color for this app is orange as it encourages critical thinking.
Gray represents the inactive states. Black allows the text to pop while yellow served as an attention grabber.
White and wheat were used to break up the monotony of the oranges and yellows.
A mixture of three different fonts were used throughout the app; Open Sans for the headers, Montserrat for the profile page, and Roboto for the body text.
Color Palette & Typography
Open Sans
Aa Aa Aa
Montserrat
Aa Aa Aa
Roboto
Aa Aa Aa
Harvest
Hex: #ED9535
RGB: 255,249,241
Orange
Hex: #F1A03A
RGB: 255,249,241
Black
Hex: #000000
RGB: 0,0,0
Lemon
Hex: #F9D541
RGB: 249,213,65
Wheat
Hex: #FFF9F1
RGB: 255,249,241
Medium Gray
Hex: #C4C4C4
RGB: 255,249,241
Golden
Hex: #F3C33E
RGB: 243,195,62
White
Hex: #FFFFFF
RGB: 255,255,255
Light Gray
Hex: #E8E6E6
RGB: 255,249,241
STYLE GUIDE
Active state buttons are provided an orange background while the inactive state is grayed out. We used the standard icons required by iOS to design the buttons and other icons.
THE SOLUTION
CultureTalk is an app that aims to help new immigrants better contextualize and adapt to their new environment in both the language and the culture by allowing users to search specific words and showing them analogous concepts from their home culture.
We believe that this can improve their educational experience, because people are able to learn things better through analogies by mentally connecting concepts they are already familiar with to things they aren’t familiar with through commonalities.
Culturetalk is an app aimed at combating culture shock by helping immigrants better understand and relate to the culture of their new homeland.
GOT ME WORKING DAY AND NIGHT
How to use Culturetalk
LEARN THROUGH PROXIMITY
When a user opts to access the search feature, they can input a term (person, place, or thing) that is common in their home country. Culturetalk will then try and match this item to its closets Western cultural equivalent.
The size of the bubble equals the strength of the connection to the target word based on meaning. Additionally, the distance from the target word equals the level of understanding based on cultural background.
REINFORCING NEW LEARNINGS
A user can bookmark new searched terms. The bookmarked words are compiled into a series of short lessons where the user can learn the proper way to use the term. Bookmarked lessons can be saved in the user's native language. For this example, the lessons are saved in Mandarin.
DEEPENING LEARNING WHILE BUILDING CONNECTIONS
There's a gamification aspect as users can earn badges for completing lessons. They can also create posts to help deepen learning and make connections with other people that are using the app.
