Project 1: Wicked Problem [Ironhack]
Immigration
At the beginning of training, Ironhack gave us a wicked problem to solve in 1 week. “The goal is not that you present a finished and polished prototype by the end of the week. We want you to focus on isolating, researching and understanding a more precise, granular, and specific problem from the given list.”
We worked by group with a subject assigned to each team. Our group had to focus on the Immigration topic, more precisely a focus on the process of obtaining a visa/resident permit for foreign people who want to come to France.
In order to find the right solution, we went through several steps.
- EMPATHIZE 🌍
Process to come to live in France for a short/long term is complex and several informative channels are available online and offline.
Target user ➜ foreign people who get into the Visa request process to come to France.
We did our secondary research only on the internet, on official, informative, visualization data, culture’s immigration websites. Most of the information we found about the process Visa request was focused on one target, the students. You are quickly lost to choose which website is the most reliable. All information we found was shared on Google doc to gain time in result analysis.
Primary research at the beginning was not simple because most of us didn’t know foreign people who went to France through a Visa process. Finally one person in our group got into this process in the past and found people on social media and her friendly environment to interview.
Several profiles emerged, but one caught our attention ➜ interviewees that wanted to change their student visa into worker visa status.
Why? Because this step, most of the time has a longer delay for obtaining information, and is the most complex stage to understand in terms of document listing and way to process.
● We observed that nationalities and individual situation can impact a lot the difficulty of the process. For example Algerian people have specific criteria for document completion and don’t have intermediary documents for changing their visa status. “Each prefecture has its own law, it’s not a unique request, each file is different. Even if the request is the same, the answers may differ depending on the individuals and their situation.”💬
● It was really interesting to listen the interviewees, almost all of them went deep into their answers to express their bad feeling about the process, and they gave us more answers at the end of each interview. We can say that all interviewees had a bad experience to come to France for study, to come to France for work and even for foreign people living in France. Justifying its presence in France never stops. “When you are migrating somewhere you have a lot of papers to do, as long I am not european it’s always a lot of papers, I am an expert “💬
● In addition to being complex, this process has a psychological impact on users. “I had to wait 6h outside under the rain to get the information, people were crying. They ask us to do a thing, and you have to do it no matter what if you want to stay”💬
“It’s an anxious period, they took your paper, you have an appointment you don’t know if you have the right paper, so if it’s ok they took the papers, but it’s note sure to have a positive reply, it’s very anxious period”💬
● One positive point stands out in answers, social media!!!!!! 🤗 Mutual aids between people who get into the process is reassuring. To get more detailed information, interviewees turn to facebook groups, forums and friends.”You can get informations from peers that could really save you…as to know that in this prefecture, the process take less time” “there is something cool…facebook groups where you can exchange informations about visa process…it’s could mislead…but in general it’s fine”.💬
Yes… this screen looks crazy… but this affinity diagram helps us a lot to categorize, vote for the main pain points and share our interview results!
In black you can observe our main pain points, which are the summaries of the paint points seen in each category.
Big post-it in light blue represent the category’s name.
2. DEFINE 🌍
a. User Persona
After research we used Mural to share all pain and positive points, sort them by category. And finally vote for the main pain point.
The pain point: bad interface of official website, not centralized information. We have gathered 1 pain point [bad interface-not centralized information] + 1 profile [foreign student who want to change its Visa status to work in France].
Sara is a paperwork expert despite herself. She is familiar with digital tools and administrative tasks. She is Algerian and came to Paris to study. She has almost graduated and has successfully completed a recruitment process to work in a french company. But in order to be hired she needs to change her visa status (still a student).
b. Problem Statement
c. User Journey
We created our user journey from this persona. Our user journey map describes stages of her user’s experience with the Visa process, from the news that she has passed the recruitment process, to the moment when she has to find the precise information regarding her change of visa status. We were in trouble because we hesitated between “the information in general about Visa process” and “official interface” to represent our product.
To conclude, Sara’s good mood diminishes throughout the day. This helped us to find the pain points in the exact chronology. There is a huge lack of communication through official websites for customized information. The taking of information is not fluent, Sara has to use different channel to get only one information (official website, social media, friends, prefecture). Finding generic information online, and having mutual aids from friends or social media represent positive steps in her journey. We will focus on these positive points to find useful solution.
3. IDEATE 🌍
a. Solution
The application will bring fluidity to navigation, especially for people familiar with digital tools.
The difficulty to find reliable information from official website is improved thanks to the chatbox. This is certainly an artificial intelligence, but which could initially guide the user through the application and provide him information more suited to his situation. The possibility of obtaining an appointment online would improve the users’ well-being by reducing the emotional pressure, the user’s stress and the wait for an answer.
b. Storyboard
➜ Open the mobile application
➜ The user enters personal information and indicates which specificity of its visa application he would like to get informed (questionnaire available as soon as you enter the application)
➜ Access to generic information according to its visa application
➜ The user doesn’t have enough information
➜ The user asks to a chatbox online
➜ The artificial intelligence gave him more details, the user is getting closer
➜ Clicks on “godfather support” to get more precise information -> the user can plan an appointment online with a specialist or physical appointment at the prefecture.
➜ The user is receiving an appointment summary with day, timetable, advisor’s name
➜ The user choose physical appointment at the prefecture and get information he was missing
4. FEEDBACK 👍
a. Group Project
Each person from my group was important, we don’t have the same profile, same experiences in the past, our professional background is diversified which makes the research enriched and interesting.
Respect for everyone’s freedom of expression. ☮️
Enough time to argue on a complex topic gave to each of us.
Criticism was listened to and understood without backward thinking or refusing to hear a negative opinion on our work.
b. What I learned?
Application of new work tools during this project (Mural, Dot voting, User persona).
Analyzing the problem and finding a solution for this topic in one week was really fast, but it was challenging and interesting for people who didn’t know each other a week before.
😄 Thank you for reading! 😄