{"id":5763,"date":"2019-04-18T14:22:58","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T18:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=5763"},"modified":"2019-04-18T15:16:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:16:59","slug":"observations-of-a-user-experience-meetup-ux-for-change-ny-the-immigrant-advocate-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/04\/18\/observations-of-a-user-experience-meetup-ux-for-change-ny-the-immigrant-advocate-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Observations of a User Experience MeetUp: UX For Change NY & The Immigrant Advocate Network"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Group photo at the end of an energizing UX design hackathon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, April 8, 2019 from 6 to 9 PM about 70 participants attended a workshop aimed to redesign how immigrants and advocates connect on immigrationlawhelp.org<\/a>. The workshop was organized on MeetUp<\/a> by the New York Chapter of UX for Change<\/a> and was hosted by Convene<\/a> (101 Greenwich St.). Additionally, members from The Six<\/a>, an innovation and strategy consultancy, were present as well as team members from the client organization, The Immigrant Advocate Network<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the event invite, \u201cOne of their primary platforms, Immigration Law Help (www.immigrationlawhelp.org<\/a>), strives to connect individuals with legal resources and advocates based on specific parameters such as detention centers served, type of immigration legal services, zip code, etc. While ImmigrationLawHelp.Org maintains the only national directory of its kind, there are opportunities to improve the current user experience and functionality. The vision is to provide a marketplace to connect users with legal providers leveraging dynamic content based on user-specific parameters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My intentions for attending the event was to learn more about how UX hackathon-type events are run and to observe the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Structure of the event – Background, agenda, facilitators, participants, space, etc.<\/li>\n
  2. Background research – Who did the research for requirements? What methods were used? How will designs be tested to ensure success with defined audience? Generally, how participatory was the target demographic engaged to gather requirements for improvements?<\/li>\n
  3. How were teams divided and what tools were employed for the process?<\/li>\n
  4. How were ideas\/proposals generated within the group(s)?<\/li>\n
  5. How were ideas presented?<\/li>\n
  6. What was the level of success of the event and by what measure?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Upon\narrival to the event, I was impressed how nice the space was and how many\npeople were already there. Many attendees were talking and there was food and\ndrinks so the atmosphere was very lively. The work tables had Post-Its,\nSharpies, and stickers for each seat and a large projector screen displayed a PowerPoint\npresentation while portable whiteboards were scattered around the perimeter. There\nwere some materials about current immigration issues posted in a couple places\nas a means, I assume, to generate empathy for the target users of the site we\nwould be analyzing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Our\nhost, Kandis O\u2019Brien, who co-organized the event spoke a bit about the mission\nof UX for Change, which \u201cconnects non-profit organizations with the UX\ncommunity to raise awareness of how the discipline of User Experience Design\ncan contribute to the goals of any organization.\u201d Then she introduced a representative\nfrom the Immigrant Advocates Network (IAN) to speak a bit about their mission,\nproducts, and services, and to introduce the website for which there were\nseeking design help. Rodrigo Camarena, the Director of IAN, described how individuals\nwho classify as DACA, people under temporary protective status, and asylum seekers\nare currently threatened by our current political climate and how IAN is a\nnon-profit, legal, tech organization that seeks to connect their network of\nover 8,000 national members with immigrants who need legal and other types of\nhelp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The website, immigrationlawhelp.org<\/a> was created in 2011 and is not responsive, does not fully support all languages, does not meet accessibility standards, and is text heavy. IAN are pursuing a re-design that helps to increase empowerment and engagement among the immigrant site visitors and families who have a variety of\nlanguages and backgrounds. Rodrigo mentioned that, based on site analytics, it is mostly visited during business hours\u2014with peaks during times of crisis, which signals that legal and non-legal advocates may be the primary users of the site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After\nthe introductions, each table of participants operated as a group and we began\nwith created Lean Personas based on the information we received from the\nclient. From that, we created \u201cHow Might We\u201d Post-Its to try to narrow in on\nthe key problem our group should aim to solve through design. Then we used the\nwhiteboards to create a User Journey that might address the problem based on\nour Persona and HMW\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After\nthe team work, we individually began a \u201cCrazy 8\u2019s\u201d sketch session to ideate eight\nideas for the translation of the User Journey into an interface. With that\nexercise complete, we each chose one of our ideas to then extend into three\ninterfaces as a more developed feature. In our groups once more, we all voted\nwith our stickers to decide which solution (or combination of interfaces) we\nwould present as a group. We loaded images of our solutions into a Google Slide\ndocument and each group presented on their thought process and outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I\nwas surprised at how similar each group\u2019s solutions were given that we all had\ndifferent personas (i.e. \u2018immigrant\u2019, \u2018family member of immigrant\u2019, \u2018service\norganization\u2019, or \u2018legal advocate\u2019). The client team members expressed\ngratitude for the help and seemed genuinely interested in the solutions that were\npresented. The organization was open to continuing the conversation after the\nevent if anyone was interested in volunteering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    From\na UX student perspective, I was encouraged that all of the activities we\ncompleted were mentioned (in some form) of Jentery Sayers\u2019 \u201cBefore You Make a\nThing\u201d including: personas, user stories\/journeys, wireframes, and paper\nprototypes. And the mission of IAN seems in line with the point about \u201cresisting\noppression\u201d through engaging directly with the power of technology and to\nexamine the \u201cdefault settings\u201d and for whom and by whom technologies were\nbuilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Personally,\nI was impressed not just with how organized the entire event was, but also how\ndiverse the UX participants were, which is encouraging in terms of how\nimportant participatory models for design should be in the field, as discussed\nin Sasha Costanza-Chock\u2019s \u201cDesign Justice: towards an intersectional feminist\nframework for design theory and practice.\u201d Having groups that are vested in\nhelping non-profit organizations who have limited budgets while also helping\nstudents and other new to the UX field get experience and connect for future\nvolunteer opportunities is a mutually beneficial situation and I\u2019m glad for the\nexperience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


    \nReferences <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Costanza-Chock,\nSasha. (2018). \u201cDesign Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework\nfor Design Theory and Practice.\u201d Proceedings of the Design Research Society\n2018<\/em>. https:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=3189696<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Sayers,\nJentery. (2018). \u201cBefore You Make a Thing: Some Tips for Approaching Technology\nand Society.\u201d Retrieved from https:\/\/jentery.github.io\/ts200v2\/notes.html<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On Monday, April 8, 2019 from 6 to 9 PM about 70 participants attended a workshop aimed to redesign how immigrants and advocates connect on immigrationlawhelp.org. The workshop was organized on MeetUp by the New York Chapter of UX for Change and was hosted by Convene (101 Greenwich St.). Additionally, members from The Six, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":605,"featured_media":5764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/600_480281299.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5771,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions\/5771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}