In my last blog post, I spoke about the idea of a disposable app and in project four, I decided to work on a real-life example of what a disposable app is by conducting a design inquiry.
In this project, I designed JAPA: A disposable application for onboarding immigrants from Nigeria. Japa is a mobile application that aims to ease the transition of a new immigrant moving from Nigeria by providing all the basic information needed and also providing a sense of home in this very uncertain and hard time in the user’s life.
To get started with my inquiry, I had a set of four research questions that I hoped this research would provide answers to at the end of the inquiry and I used a combination of questionnaires and interviews to conduct this survey.
As part of my research, I created a 15-question questionnaire and sent it out to my target audience; Nigerians in the diaspora. I also held interviews with a group of 4 of my friends from the same target audience pool. The responses from the research gave a lot more insights into the what my target audience would have wanted when they moved to a new country themselves.
After reviewing these research results, I went on to further create a mindmap which would encompass everything I had understood from the questionnaires and the interviews conducted. When creating this mindmap, I made notes of the responder’s needs and also acknowledged the fact that 26.7% of the responders still did not feel comfortable in their new country.
The outcome of the mindmap was a detailed mobile application.
Reflecting on the results of this research led me to more insights into the process of moving and settling into a new country than I had before. It was an emotional process, from talking to my friends during the interviews and them telling me how much they still feel displaced in their new land to them telling me how they would have loved to have a platform like Japa to help them manage the culture shock when they moved.
All in all, the research buttressed the need for Japa and I hope to be able to continue going forward.