Wicked Problem: Immigration
UX Concept
PROJECT TYPE
The new century has experienced an exponential increase in people’s mobility all around the world. Even if migration has always been a recurrent phenomenon across history, never before has humankind seen such variety of destinations, motivations, and setups.
Along with the experience of migrating — possibly having to adapt to a different culture or language — come a number of bureaucratic tasks that need to be fulfilled within a certain period of time to legalize the journey in the host country.
About
August 2024
DATE
How might we help migrants find the information they need, complete immigration tasks, and start their new lives? We had only 5 days to gain a better understanding of the problem and identify potential solutions. So we thoroughly immersed ourselves in our process.
The project described in this case study addresses a 'wicked problem' — a complex issue with no clear solutions. Here we explore immigration, a topic of growing importance as global mobility continues to rise.
The Process & Design Thinking
Valeriia Platova, Ivan Avellaneda, Charlie Moinet
TEAM
Empathize
1
Define
2
Ideate
3
Prototype
4
Test
5
1/Empathize
We started brainstorming ideas on our topic: the key challenges and difficulties faced by people who go through immigration. CSD matrix helped us to gather and categorize our ideas into three groups: certainties, suppositions, and doubts. The process was challenging, generating numerous ideas and hypotheses. We validated our suppositions through secondary research, and ultimately selected five assumptions to explore further during interviews.
  1. Language bareer affects the process of going through bureaucratic procedures
  2. Migrants face significant challenges in accessing clear and accurate information about immigration-related tasks and city integration due to complex bureaucratic processes
  3. Complex-long Migration process can produce emotional distress, and can have an impact on daily life.
  4. Immigrants struggle to find and use online resources that could help them integrate, like support services, job opportunities, and education
  5. Digital platforms and online resources play a crucial role in facilitating the migration process, but digital literacy varies widely among migrants.
These assumptions were:
We validated our assumptions through five in-depth interviews with individuals who have immigration experience.
2/Define
After we conducted five interviews, Affinity diagram helped us to organize our findings into seven clusters. Using the dot voting method, we identified key themes in our research, which led us to focus on digital platforms and accessibility — essential for migrants navigating unfamiliar bureaucracies.

Based on our interviews and research, we developed a profile of Lin, an international student from China, who is navigating the challenges of adjusting to life in France.
User Persona
Access to services
Experience with digital platforms
With our persona finalized, we shifted our focus to crafting a clear, problem-centered statement. After extensive discussion, we identified the difficulty of accessing centralized resources as the primary challenge. The problem statement sounded like:
International students need to find a way to have centralized access to all required immigration and administrative information because they feel overwhelmed by the complexity of administrative tasks and struggle to find reliable and complete information on procedures and support.
Support from the environment
Lack of integrated information points
Emotional issues
Language issues
Education
3/Ideate
For ideation, we used the ‘Crazy 8’ technique: we quickly sketched a variety of solutions in just eight minutes, which helped us explore different ideas. The ideas varied widely: from a social network that connects immigrants with locals willing to offer help, to a gamified version where completing immigration-related tasks is presented as levels in a game. So we used dot voting to identify our top choice for further development. We ultimately decided to focus on developing a personalized app that provides a clear, customized action plan tailored to each user's specific situation and goals.
After we choose the main idea, we created a task flow:
Welcome
Onboarding / Register
A list of procedures to provide support
Register with Google account
Select procedures that capture the user’s interest
Main screen
Tap on procedure which needs to be completed
A questionnaire designed to define and personalize further support
Choose answers
A detailed, customized plan designed specifically to help the user reach their goals.
4/Prototype
Based on the user’s task flow, each member of our group created their own hand-sketched prototype.
After discussing our ideas, we agreed on the version to implement:
5/Test
We needed to validate our idea through concept testing. The feedback we received was quite positive, though there’s always room for improvement.
"I understand the concept. The path to Visa requirements is quite clear."

Test №1
"Home screen looks overwhelmed."

Test №2
"The solution seems to be quite useful, would love to have finished version of it to explore further."

Test №3
"Interesting idea to personalize the search so you don't get information you don't need."

Test №4
Conclusions
After identifying the challenges immigrants face, we chose to focus on the most prevalent issue: the absence of a single, personalized information hub, which makes finding relevant information overwhelming. We developed the concept of an app that provides users with all the necessary information to complete their immigration tasks. Our solution offers several advantages: personalization, a well-structured information architecture an intuitive user flow. Testing revealed that the solution has potential for further development.
Tackling a difficult problem with little time was tough, but getting a real result made it all worth it.


Thanks for reading!
Valeriia