This week’s class was dedicated fully to one-to-one tutorials so that each of us could go over our project idea and progress so far with our lecturer. With our design critique next week, it was a good time to discuss the project and my plans for it going forward. I was pleased with the results of the discussion as my lecturer was happy with my idea and progress and encouraged me to continue progressing with the project on my current trajectory. It was useful for me to get this feedback and it gave me the confidence to move forward from the research and discovery phase to now creating sketches and lo-fi prototypes of my idea.
As we had no lecture content this week I saw it as a good time to look at a project that recently won a UX Design Award in the new talent category, edaid. This winner caught my attention as it was designed to help teachers integrate newly arrived refugees into schools. As it was designed for newly arrived refugees I could see parallels with my project, so I felt it would be useful for me to take a deeper look at this project and hopefully gain some insights from it that could help my project.
Edaid is an application designed to help teachers integrate newly arrived refugees into the local education system, providing them with the means to assess the new pupil's academic and emotional needs.
The two sources I found information on edaid were:
https://ux-design-awards.com/winners/2024-1-helping-teachers-integrate-refugee-students
https://jdelclaux.myportfolio.com/3
(Last Accessed 18/03/24)
While edaid is designed for the education rather than the healthcare sector I could immediately see there would be a crossover with my healthcare project. Both projects are centred on helping refugees as they arrive in a new country by providing the people supporting them, with a tool that considers refugees' needs and pain points. Both projects also provide a screening user flow to help in edaid’s case teachers, in mine, volunteers and border force staff figure out what the refugees need and what next steps can be taken.
I was interested to read edaid’s case study to see what research the designer had undertaken and what insights they had gained from the research. This was because some of these insights would likely be similar to those I would find and could help me to improve my design.
One of the four main insights edaid’s designer discovered was that the language barrier can affect the confidence of refugees. I had through my research discovered the issues a language barrier can cause but only in the practical sense of its potential to derail the assessment process, I had not considered the effect on a person’s confidence, that not being able to communicate may have. I am developing a translation tool to include in my project to help combat the language barrier, but with this new information, I can consider how I design that tool from both a practical (does it work) and an emotional (how does it make a user feel) viewpoint.
Another key insight from edaid was how a person’s emotional stability can affect their ability to integrate into their new community. While I am only looking at the first point of contact for people on arrival, considering how their emotional stability may impact their ability to engage with my health check, is an important design consideration. I need to make sure that my design is user-friendly for people who may be struggling mentally and need reassurance and support.
I mustn't lose sight of the challenging situation in which my design will be used and ensure I consider this in my design. This will take many forms from the visual design and clarity of the interface to considering cultural factors within the design and how the translator sounds. All these factors will make a huge difference in whether people engage with my project and therefore whether it meets its design goals.
A key point that I saw in edaid’s user personas, was the frustration about not being able to communicate with people from the person’s country of origin to gain, for a teacher, information about their previous education. My users will face the same issues regarding health data and therefore it will be key for me to ensure the questions in my healthcare questionnaire are clear enough to encourage the refugees to disclose any pre-existing health issues.
Looking at edaid has proven to be a useful exercise for me, as at a high level it faces similar challenges to my project, the language barrier, the emotional fragility of the people involved and a lack of information about a person’s history and background. Assessing how edaid tackled these challenges and looking for ideas I could use or things on which I can improve will help me deliver a better final result for my design.
This week has been hugely beneficial for me, the opportunity to discuss my project and get feedback on the direction I am going was invaluable in solidifying my confidence in the project, it is always great to show an idea to a different person and get feedback on it.
Also, the fact we didn’t have any lecture content for me to look at, gave me the freedom to look at a design award winner with similarities to my project and gain valuable insights from that product that I can use to improve my project.