This product is a result of the "Digital Cities, Digital Communities" course, focused on designing and offering digital solutions, and took place in Anhalt University in Germany. I was a part of a 5-member team, my role was UX generalist and I tried to take part in each step of the research and design process to learn more and empower my product design skills.
My Role
UX Generalist (Involved in all stages)
Responsibilities: Conducting user research - developing concepts - Designing the user interface (wireframes, mockups & prototypes)
Research Theme
"Digital Solutions for International Students in Germany", focus on settlement & paperwork.
Duration: 7 days workshop in 2022 + 2 months further development and usability studies.
Problem Statement
More than 30,000 international students move to Germany every year and struggle with bureaucratic processes. Crucial information is spread across different databases.
Goal Statement
The app optimizes the student immigration process to Germany, by offering step-by-step guidance, progress tracking, and local support.
Meme mood-board. An informal representation of the problem statement
Understanding Our Audience: Focus Group
We chose this method to collaboratively gather valuable insights. By bringing people together, we aimed to uncover common pain points and encourage open sharing of experiences. This allows for group empathy, breaking the ice and eliciting clear insights.
「 Our team consisted of international students, but we decided to conduct a focus group with newcomer students. Instead of relying on memories and biases, let's focus on fresh experiences and upcoming challenges. 」
Defining Personas: Who Are We Designing For?
After analyzing the valuable data from focus group, and extracting quotes and insights, we tried to define personas who reflect our users feelings and emotions. Some pain points and challenges were common among them which helped us combine those into one persona. 3 selected personas are presented below:
User Storyboard
Ideation: How Might We Help Ali?
On the ideation process, we focused mostly on our extreme persona, as this persona's user journey covers challenges that milder personas face too. Ali, a foreign student from Iran. Due to various geopolitical situations, he has faced some unique struggles in his journey to move to Germany for his master's. After several months of meticulous planning, and endless paperwork, he has finally arrived in Germany. But is all the work over? Little did he know the endless bureaucratic procedures he was in for…
Ali's case helped us understand his needs better and we then formulated our main question:
「 How might we help Ali receive all needed information from one platform, to avoid unnecessary complications regarding paperwork and bureaucracy? 」
Foreign students are often mid-term residents who don't have many contacts or even relations with locals. This could be due to language barriers or cultural differences. We wondered if we could create a reliable platform where new students could connect and follow the essential steps needed to settle in as international residents.
Implementation of Dark Horse Method
In a horse race, a “dark” horse is a horse no one believes would win and therefore underestimates the horse’s potential. This inspires a Design Thinking method which can help to develop Iterative and innovative concepts. Considering this method particularly for our project, we decided to create a platform that could integrate universities and related organizations (e.g. Ausländerbehörde) to help students track their progress and inform them of their next steps.
「 The Dark Horse method focuses on iterative design and exploring unconventional design solutions that may initially seem risky or improbable. In our case, it involves bridging our platform with German organizations, and connecting students with local people. 」
Competitive Audits: What's Already Out There?
uni-assist
(Indirect competitor)
. Document submission for university applications
. Application status tracking and checklist
. Search and filter system for study programs
. Information on financial aid and scholarships
. Guidance on academic requirements
. Additional information for specific nationalities
Fintiba
(Direct competitor)
. Access to resources only after registration
. Digital blocked account opening for visa application
. Insurance services for health and liability
. Secure document storage and sharing
. Customer support and assistance
. Offering different subscription plans
Spotting Opportunities: How To Improve The Experience?
After analyzing the focus group input and also pros and cons of competitors, we gathered some opportunities for optimizing the student's experience on their immigration process. These insights will be implemented not only as the structure of the digital product, but also on the appearance and user interface of the app. Some of these opportunities are mentioned below:
Introducing Newbie.Nest: Personal Immigration Buddy
Our product, called "Newbie.Nest", serves as a bridge between the foreign students and related government organizations. The app is tailored to inform international students with nation-specific immigration procedures.
. a checklist of tasks and timeline (e.g. accommodation, bank account, insurance)
. access to government-approved document templates
. connections with local buddies who can help with translations and paperwork.
. links to external services and relevant information.
. student offers, upcoming events and affordable travel recommendations.
User flow upon registration. Possible navigations that students encounter for the first time on the app.
Paper wireframes. Developing the structure of UI elements and participating in team critique
「 Main elements of the User Interface: on the home screen, our users can find most of the app features that help them settle in Germany. This includes a timeline progress bar, tasks that need to be completed and a carousel with related posts that can be helpful for the student. We embedded a subscription based Pro version as a main tab in order to offer business scaling possibilities. This part will be further tested with a stakeholder afterwards. 」
「 The low-fidelity prototype consists of the flow a user passes when they first open the app, leading to the register/login screen and the home page. In this prototype users also can interact with elements of the main page and the hamburger menu.
Preparing the low-fidelity prototype was a crucial state for us, since it's the moment when explaining the concept verbally shifts to interactive product that can be tested with users and peers, and can receive feedback for further iterations. 」
Usability Studies
We shared the low-fidelity prototype with five participants for this usability study. They were asked to use the app based on their own priorities and find their way around, while thinking out loud. Participants included: three international students, one peer providing expert feedback and one stakeholder offering insights on business scalability. This diverse feedback helped us pinpoint specific issues such as navigation difficulties, feature clarity, and potential for user engagement.
Design Iteration: What Did We Improve?
Necessary adjustments labeled as "Priority 0" were instantly revised on the cyclical process of iterative design. By analyzing the insights, we could determine what's keeping the users away from a smooth and barrier-free experience, while keeping the business goals in mind.
User Interface Design
Reflecting On My Experience
- This project was a really good chance for me and my team to challenge our bias-controlling skills. All through the process of empathy to design, we could see ourselves as users of this service, which is not bad at the first place, but gets critical when involving personal experiences and interpretations of events starts. For this specific reason, we tried to gather a diverse group of users and peers to keep the project more on point and serving the real needs.
