Case Study
Helping Expats in Iceland to Integrate and get Access to Essential Information in English
My Role
Product Designer with sole responsibility for all aspects of:
UX research & design
User Testing
UI
Prototyping
Strategy
Project Context
This was a student project for my UX qualification with Career Foundry. I completed this remotely on a part time basis over 6 months.
Project Brief
Design a web-based application which enables people to connect with an expert anytime, anywhere to ask questions about specific topics.
The Product
Ask Iceland! enables foreigners living in Iceland to get help and advice about living in Iceland. Users can speak with local experts about topics ranging from legal rights and school systems to learning and practising Icelandic.
The app reduces stress and frustration experienced by foreigners when they move to Iceland, by providing a single point of reliable information in English. It empowers users to quickly find help or advice, and it helps foreigners build connections and integrate with the Icelandic community.
Link to Ask Iceland Prototype
What Problem Needs to be Solved?
14% of people living in Iceland are immigrants and this number is growing rapidly. Native Icelanders tend to have large local support networks that have been established since childhood and they can turn to these networks when they need help or advice. But foreigners who relocate to Iceland don’t know where to go for help with essential needs such as completing taxes, health services, education systems, employment rights and housing. They are often faced with navigating complicated government and social systems alone, and they do not speak Icelandic so are unable to Google answers to questions. Not only can this be deeply frustrating and stressful for foreign citizens, but it also creates a barrier to full societal integration.
Problem Statement
Foreigners living in Iceland need a way to easily access information about living in Iceland in a language they can understand.
Without quick and easy access to information it is difficult to integrate with Icelandic society, there are financial penalties and foreigners can feel frustrated and discriminated against.
We will know this to be true when we see foreigners in Iceland using the app as their primary source of information about living in Iceland.
Competitor Analysis
To understand the gaps in existing potential solutions I chose to research:
Multiple ‘Ask an Expert’ services such as Justanswer.com
Local government and Icelandic information websites
Expat relocation companies
A SWOT analysis of the findings revealed that there are no services or centralized information sources in English for foreigners living in Iceland. There is a clear gap in the market.
Venn diagram revealing a gap in the market for a service which helps foreigners integrate when they move to Iceland
Opportunities and threats to consider when assessing the viability of an ‘Ask and Expert’ service for foreigners living in Iceland
| Opportunities | Threats |
|---|---|
| Businesses | Post-Pandemic world |
| Employee relocation is expensive & risky. If employees & their family don’t integrate, they may leave. Businesses are a good target market for this app. | More people are working remotely after the pandemic which reduces the market for relocations. |
| Shortage of Icelandic teachers | New Government services website |
| Native Icelanders could teach Icelandic or practise Icelandic with foreigners through the app. | The Icelandic government launched a website centralising their services during this project. They have stated that this is part of a project to provide user centred experiences. This removes some of the big issues experienced by foreigners. It is also integrated with an electronic id which gives users easy access to their confidential information. |
| Tourists | Existing expert services |
| Tourists often ask Icelandic Facebook groups about trips to Iceland. The app could be expanded as a resource for tourists. | Well established question and answer companies could easily recruit experts with location specific knowledge. |
| Government Partnership | |
| Government social services need more resource to support foreign citizens. | |
| Global Expansion | |
| Millions of people relocate around the world each year and need to integrate into their new country or learn the local language. |
User Research Goals
I wanted to better understand what kinds of problems foreigners experience when living in Iceland, how they try to solve problems and what helps or hinders their integration into Icelandic society. To evaluate my problem statement and find out if a question and answer app is a viable solution I focused on the following 3 questions:
A screenshot of my user research goals
Target Population
I used government stats to identify two main groups of foreigners living in Iceland:
Low-income workers in tourism, hospitality or manual labour in their 20s
High-income office workers in technology and management aged 30+
Many of these people are active in Facebook support groups for foreigners living in Iceland so I was able to easily recruit participants from there.
The drawback of recruiting participants from these groups is that they are all fluent in English. The large Polish and Lithuanian populations living in Iceland tend not to frequent these Facebook groups.
I used my network in Iceland to recruit research participants on Facebook
Research Methods
I chose to conduct a survey followed by one to one remote interviews for the following reasons:
Survey
Cheap & easy starting point
Quick way to evaluate validity of the problem statement and gauge interest in a question and answer app as an appealing solution
Bias towards English speaking participants and active Facebook users
An extract of the survey conducted in Survey Monkey
Directed Interviews
Understand specific examples of problems faced and how people try to solve them.
Understand how people feel when solving problems and why
Get more detailed demographic data that might influence the types of problems people are trying to solve.
The 100% completion rate with no compensation demonstrated high engagement with the topic
Survey Findings
The survey confirmed the validity of my problem statement and indicated that people are enthusiastic about an app as a solution. The comments returned a lot of detailed and useful information about people’s experiences and emotions.
44% of participants said they were highly likely or definitely likely to use an app which helps them get information about living in Iceland.
Only 15% said an app would be of little or no interest.
A graph showing which potential features of an app would be considered the most useful
Interview Findings
The interviews were originally scheduled for 20 minutes but ended up taking an hour each because participants were so detailed and forthcoming with their answers. This gave me lots of data to work through and very useful insights.
However, all participants were female, in relationships and Facebook users. With more time and resources I would have conducted interviews with a wider population that includes men, single people, people with disabilities and people who do not use facebook
I conducted hour long video interviews with 4 participants and recorded each interview (with permission) and transcribed into notes ready to translate into affinity maps.
I noted all significant statements and quotes on post-its to create affinity maps.
An extract of coded interview notes
A photo of interview notes transferred to post its
Six Key Findings
Short opening times of organisations is one of the biggest barriers to solving problems
It is common to receive incorrect / conflicting information from official sources
Asking Icelandic friends and family for help is the most common technique for solving problems
Foreigners do not speak Icelandic well, even after living in Iceland for a long time
Foreigners find it difficult to integrate with Icelandic society, even after living in the country for a long time
Foreigners struggle to understand important documents like bills, payslips and bank statements and are uncomfortable asking others to translate confidential documents
The results revealed an overwhelmingly negative experience for foreigners living in Iceland which is deeply emotional and has altered their personal identity and sense of self worth.
Insights and Solutions
I used affinity maps to identify key themes and meaningful insights that could be used to define major needs and solutions.
I consolidated everything into a single spreadsheet for findings, insights and solutions.
Affinity mapped quotes from a single participant
Screenshot of my affinity mapping board in Miro for all participants
Partial screenshot of my findings, insights and solutions spreadsheet
Six Key Needs
What Foreigners in Iceland want
A way to build social connections & a professional network in Iceland
To understand how all the systems & processes work in Iceland
To have one easily accessible source of information
To trust the reliability of the information
To have convenience & flexibility
To have information available in English
Proposed Solutions
Most challenges that foreigners face can be eased via
Access to a ‘one-stop-shop’ solution where they can easily access all relevant information in English about living in Iceland
Improved quality of available information in terms of quantity, accuracy and transparency
Improved communication and understanding from people answering questions
More accessible ways for foreigners to learn and practice Icelandic
Access to strong support networks
Personas and User Journeys; a path to self-actualisation
I developed three personas to represent a different aspect of foreigners’ experience when they move to Iceland and based them on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because the current experiences of foreigners in Iceland are preventing them from meeting these needs.
I referred constantly to these personas during the design process to ensure that the final product helps users achieve self-actualisation.
I used these personas to map out some user stories to better understand the emotional experience and thought process for users in different scenarios.
New Niko persona
Social Selena persona
Frustrated Frida persona
User journeys for two personas
Initial Designs
Low Fidelity Wireframes
After mapping out some task flows I did some brainstorming and rough sketches before drawing some low fidelity wireframes. Although the project brief was only to design an ask an expert app the user research indicated that a social element is just as essential as being able to get answers to questions. So I designed the app with a community feed where users can interact with experts and community members in a public forum. I anticipated that users would book calls with experts when they need more detailed information or they prefer more confidentiality.
I hypothesized that the most frequent action users will take on the home screen is to ask a question. Therefore, I designed the home screen primarily around this action and put a large CTA at the top of the screen.
Two example task flows - one for onboarding and one for browsing and selecting an expert in the app
Low fidelity designs on paper
Information Architecture
After the first design iterations, I used open sort and hybrid sort analysis to test users understanding of the vocabulary I had chosen for the app navigation. All the participants were UX students and this potentially skewed the results because they leaned towards more technical language than I would expect for the average user. However, they were of varying nationalities and so English was not a first language for many of the participants and so this was a good starting point to map out the information architecture, guide the initial designs and course correct in case I was using terminology that no one understood.
Results of a sort analysis in Optimal Sort
Visual representation of participant mental models as identified through the sort analysis
Site map for first iteration app in Miro
Rapid Protoyping
I created mockups for the core functionality to better understand how each process would flow and revised my designs until they were ready for a first round of user testing. This also helped me to write a usability test plan and be clear about the tasks I would ask participants to complete during testing.
I used Balsamiq to create a Rapid prototype of the Ask a Question flow
Usability Testing
Testing Objectives
There were three main objectives for testing. For the full usability test plan click here
Method
I conducted moderated remote usability testing with 6 participants recruited from the Foreigners in Iceland group on Facebook. Participants were aged 30 - 50 and I was pleased that participants were all of different nationalities so that I could assess how clear the app language is to users where English is not their first language.
Tasks
Users were asked to explore the home page and navigation, then complete five tasks:
Example wireframes from the testing prototype created in Sketch
Usability Test Results
Positive outcomes
Participants loved the idea and expressed excitement and delight during testing
Processes were considered very easy to complete
Participants really liked the expert profiles
Participants were enthusiastic about exploring the content
Negative outcomes
Major issues with Onboarding
Users did not like being surprised when finding out they need to pay for experts. Although everyone found the app easy to use they did not necessarily understand what to expect when completing each process and half of the participants stated that in real life they would not subscribe because they did not feel comfortable about what they were signing up for.
And they strongly disliked the term ‘Subscription’ and much preferred the term ‘Account’.
Affinity mapping in Miro for all participants across each task
Key Learning Points
My hypothesis about user behaviour was incorrect. The user’s first action is not to ask questions. Users search existing content for answers first and only ask a question if they can not find an existing answer.
Users feel nervous about taking actions that can be seen publicly
Users want to look around the app before starting to use it
Easy processes do not automatically translate into good experiences
Users want to know how other people behave & use that to guide how they want to use the app
Prioritisation of Issues
Rainbow Spreadsheet
I used a rainbow mapping spreadsheet to organize the testing results and used the Nielsen usability rating scale to rank the top five errors and issues. It became clear that most issues could be resolved through better onboarding and changing the subscription model so I grouped multiple issues together based on their shared solution.
A screenshot of the rainbow spreadsheet I created in Google Sheets
Top 5 Issues
There were no issues that prevented users from actually completing processes. However, I graded three as high because of the level of consistency and passion users related during testing. For example, issue number three: Strongly dislike subscription model had the impact of making most participants say that in real life they would not sign up to the app specifically because of this terminology. I considered this an essential fix for the success of the product.
A diagram showing colour coded issue prioritisation with appropriate solutions
Continuous Iterations
I implemented changes to the app based on the outcomes of user testing and then continuously made small improvements based on A/B tests, heuristic reviews, application of colour psychology and accessibility assessments.
Colour
During the research, participants frequently described experiencing annoyance, anger, sadness, and apprehension when dealing with day to day challenges living in Iceland.
During user testing, participants mentioned experiencing annoyance and surprise while interacting with the prototype. And they emphasized how important it is to feel like they are able to trust the people and advice they access on Ask Iceland.
On this basis, I implemented a colour palette which foster emotions of optimism, confidence and trust using Plutchik’s wheel as a guide.
Initial colour pallette for the app
Accessibility
The users of Ask Iceland! are already disadvantaged by not speaking the local language and this will be an additional challenge for anyone requiring local support for accessibility needs. Therefore, it is of particular importance to make sure that the Ask Iceland app has a high level of accessibility to make it easy for everyone to use. For this reason, I made changes to the design to meet AA standards as a minimum wherever possible.
Colour blindness / contrast check results for the proposed colour palette
A/B Preference Testing
The accessibility checks led me to make changes to the colour palette. I changed the dominant colour from orange to green. But I felt that this didn’t look as appealing so I conducted some A/B tests. The results showed no statistically significant preference for orange or green so I felt confident that using green as the primary brand colour would not be detrimental to aesthetics.
The Evolution of a Home Screen; a path to self-actualisation
Here you can see how the home screen has evolved from low-fidelity sketches to a high-fidelity prototype: