"I design intuitive and inclusive digital products"
Nuevo
‘The one-stop social network for immigrant communities’
1.Overview
Nuevo is a social media focused on connecting immigrants together to promote engagement, help, and support between communities. It is a safe space where US immigrants can rely on each other to find information, share experiences, also network and promote their business.
2.Problem Statement
According to the American Immigration Council in 2019, 44.9 million immigrants (foreign-born individuals) compromised 14% of the national population. The united states were home to 22.0 million women, 20.4 million men, and 2.5 million children who were immigrants.14% of the nation's residents are foreign-born.
Many of them are fleeing away from war, hunger, and persecution, some of them come for a short term, to visit, study or work. However, immigrants are faced with many barriers once they arrive in the US, such as language barriers, lack of employment opportunities, housing, access to medical services, transportation, and cultural differences.
The purpose of the project is to help immigrants to have access to information and support from their community members. Bringing immigrants together could help them solve their issues and have answers to their questions.
3.Users and Audience
Nuevo is for foreign-born US residents.
The target users are new immigrants from 0 to 5 years of residency in the US but can also be extended to any immigrant: international students, tourists, temporary workers, immigrant business owners…
4. Roles and Responsibilities
This project was developped at the early stage of my studies in the User Experience Design field.
It was built individually and my role was to find a solution to an existing problem. I was responsible of conducting a research plan and synthesis, develop an information architecture consisting of a site map and a user flow, build low fidelity wireframes , and implement a design system to high fidelity wireframes.
5.Scope and Constraints
I built work on Nuevo a timeframe of 1 month .
One constraint I encountered during the research process was the fear or hesitation of some immigrants. Even if most of the people I interviewed were responsive, some of them refrained to give complete information or open opinion.
I also had to consider different backgrounds and communities in order to obtain relevant data during the research.
Another minor challenge, I met was my personal biases. As an immigrant, I had to refrain from the tendency to have my personal opinion impact some decisions and only focus on the user's need.
6. Design process
In the first part of my work, I established a work plan to have an overview of my approach. I concluded with a methodology consisting of:
-A comparative analysis:
Nextdoor and Homeis are 2 platforms similar to the Nuevo project.
Nextdoor is a social network of neighbors, virtually informing and supporting each other. Homeis is a recently closed app for immigrants to discuss and share information. One takeaway from Homeis was the engaging interface and the business and events page from Nextdoor.
-Interview and surveys:
I interviewed 8 people. The interviews were set as open discussions to invite the interviewees to freely share their opinions. Additionally, I used a 5-point-scale survey of 8 questions, filled out by 10 people, with options to leave a comment, for me to learn more about their preferences. The goal was to gather qualitative data from US immigrants with different cultural and social backgrounds.
I found out that most immigrants strongly agree with the importance of being part of a community to virtually share or give support, guide, refer, feel at home, or just openly share opinions with people like them.
-Affinity Mapping And User persona:
Insights from the interviews and the surveys shows that , most immigrants admit that they faced challenges when they freshly arrived in the US, and also while settling in the US. They find a benefit of a platform to learn from others' experiences or knowledge of the country, they have some needs of belonging.
These insights allowed me to categorize my results on an affinity map of 4 categories: 1) Platform for Resources, 2) Experiences and needs, 3) Feeling of belonging/Communities, 4) A question mark category: for miscellaneous details.
In conclusion, the affinity map guided me in establishing a user persona named Anna: A young student from Ukraine trying to settle in Brooklyn, learn English, and meet new people. Because of the current actuality, I think this user persona can perfectly illustrate a typical user of Nuevo.
-Moodboard and Frameworks:
I made the choice of 6 shades of blue colors for Nuevo. Blue illustrates the sky and the sea: either traveling by boat or by airplane, immigrants mostly see the sea or the sky. Blue also expresses something new and fresh.Coming to the US is a new beginning for most immigrant.
Roboto and Nunito are 2 casual typographie fonts frequently used and allow reading facility for a platform with a lot of content such as Nuevo. Nunito for headings and big titles, Roboto for body texts.
I worked on 8 frameworks: 2 for login,1 for the home page, 1 for a user post, 1 for a business page, 1 for the explore page, and 2 profile pages: the user and his possible new connection.
-Sitemaps and User Flows:
Working on the sitemap allowed me to have a general view of the website’ s interface.The menu is as followed:
'Explore': Allows the user to browse relevant news,stay updated on community events,join new communities,ask or offer help.
'Market': Users should be able to create their busness pages , support immigrant small businesses or trade objects/services with each others.
'Home': It is the general feed page.
'People': The networking page for users to make connections.
'Notifications': For new alerts.
-Wireframes
7.Outcomes and lessons learned
During my work, I learned a lot about immigrants, their questioning, their needs, and their diversities.
Technically, I learned how surveys and interview questions can be decisive for the research results. Also, a user researcher must be open-minded but non-biased as we design for the user's needs.
The iteration of this project is still in progress for a revised information architecture, prototype, and animation but most importantly the implementation of accessibility features, as I believe an emphasis on inclusivity it is a must for an application like Nuevo.
Ressources:
Figma File:
https://www.figma.com/design/YZ3fIZUvORBDWc6Iuf5meC/Nuevo?m=auto&t=g7Hw9bMv97vf2ets-6
Survey:
Nextdoor:
Homeis: