Pathway Refugee Communication App

Summary

Company: SRVR

Role: UX/UI Designer

Task: Plan and create the UX for an education and communication app to coordinate the transition of refugees from their country to the USA.

Technologies Used: Sketch, Invision

Project overview

Communication is a difficult problem to overcome when transitioning a refugee from their home country to the USA. Pathway was a project that would solve that problem. An app that combined the necessary educational resources and provided a communication portal for refugees and their case manager. Up until then, case managers had been tracking everything in spreadsheets (ugh) and communication was divided up between email, text, and phone calls which made it easy to miss critical information. We really needed to bring all of that functionality into one, simple-to-use application.

The Challenge

In order to work for both the refugees and the case managers, Pathway needed to have both a mobile and desktop app. It also required a way to improve communications between people in completely different time zones while making it easy for the case manager to track the refugee's progress with the educational materials. Refugees would often call case managers in the middle of the night, not realizing the time difference.

Problems to be addressed were:

• Broken communication
• Several different communication portals
• Calls limited to case manager business hours
• Tracking communication and documentation

The application needed a separate experience for the case manager than the refugee since the case manager would need to upload documents and embed videos. The client only needed to consume the information.

The Process

Interviews

Inteviews were held with case managers and with former refugees to get a better understanding of the difficulties that they face in the immigration process. Several issues were found to be reoccurring. The issues that were found:

• Communication was difficult and fractured.
  • Differing timezones made timing communication difficult
  • Communication was through various sources: email, text, phone calls, etc. This made things to easy to lose or be missed.
  • The immigration process is difficult and anxiety-inducing. Frequent communication helps to ease those fears and reduce stress.
• Educational materials were often left incomplete. Case managers would have to contact the refugee numerous times in order to make sure the materials were completed.
• Documents frequently need to be reviewed and signed.

The Solution

Solving The Communication Problem

Pathway was designed to handle chat and email functionality. It also integrated with the QuickCall app for phone calls. The case manager was able to set up a QuickCall account for the refugee and add money to the account right from the Pathway admin.

Solving The Documents and Training Problem

Training materials were broken up into courses and sections. Each section contained assets (videos, PDFs, etc.) that the refugee would need to go through. The case manager would be able to track their progress as they marked each section as completed.