Project 4: Research and Design for mobile and Desktop Portal prototype

Bitae Technologies, winner of Columbia University’s most promising startup award


Challenge

Refugees are forced to flee from their homes and everything familiar to them. In some cases arriving at their host countries with little or no personal records. The goal of this project was to design an app to enable individuals with refugee status to carry their personal records in a secure way and increase the likelihood of achieving self-reliance.


Team

Our team included me, Product Manager Eve, and UX/UI Designers Jason and Gabe.


My role

  • Recruit research participants

  • Conduct discovery research interviews

  • Co-Design end-to-end clickable mobile and desktop portal prototypes

  • Facilitate usability testing

  • Co-analysis and affinity mapping of research data

  • Design persona video (Illustration, Copy, and Edit: Eréndira Music: Gabe)


I was particularly impressed by Eréndira’s ability to empathize with the users of our platform. That skill is not easy to find but it seemed to come perfectly naturally to her, and it was essential for the design of our product.
— Gemma Torras Vives, Bitae co-founder

Process

  • Co-create the research plan and strategy

  • Conduct discovery and stakeholder interviews

  • Analyze interviews

  • Affinity mapping 

  • Co-design clickable prototypes

  • Conduct usability testing, iterate on the design and repeat x 3

  • Present findings and final recommendations


Takeaways

It was a great opportunity to partner with Bitae Tech on this project. Usability participants stated the app was of value, accessible, credible, and had a clean design. Our team aligned with Bitae Tech’s mission which is to improve the lives of people with refugee status. We were inspired to go above and beyond the project scope and produced an Impact Map and Persona Storyboard Video. These two additional deliverables assisted Bitae Tech’s co-founders to share their message and gain funding.