Profe
Is a profession specific language learning app to support the economic development of low-income LatinX immigrants in the United States.
Profe was designed as part of a six-week team project at MIT focusing on digital design and user research.
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In this project I developed skills in user research and synthesis, concept development, creating personas, user journeys, wireframes, and digital prototyping
Step 1: Primary User Research
To gather data on the topic of “Immigration challenges in the US”, my team and I created an Interview questionnaire. I travelled the city of Boston and conducted interviews with people that fit our demographics criteria for this study.
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Image on the left: I'm interviewing Rafael (green shirt) who shared his life story of escaping El Salvador during the civil war and coming to the US on asylum 35 ears ago. He then worked as a dish washer and waiter for decades. Currently he is a priest at the local church and runs a mango stall to generate income through which he supports 300 families that went through similar ordeals.
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Step 2: Data Synthesis
Data from 30 interviews were chunked into individual sticky notes, and then logically grouped together. This helped us look at the data collectively and identify pain points for users.
Step 3: Data Analysis & Need-Finding
We gained a system understanding of the challenge by further grouping the data and linking the groups together. This helped us understand the interconnected needs of the user:
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Need to achieve financial stability
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Need to communicate effectively with others
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Need to feel part of a community
To understand the relative importance of these needs, we plotted the user data against time and categorized it based on the strength of the sentiment. This analysis revealed that language challenges are persistent, even for immigrants that have been in the US for several decades.
Step 4: Creating User Personas
I constructed user personas based on the data, this helped us develop a solution to defined pain points and needs.
Step 5: Defining the Goal
The Personas, Data Analysis and secondary research led to defining our goal:
How might we Improve the economic opportunities of low-income Latinx immigrants, like Mateo, by helping them develop profession-specific English skills.
Step 6: User Journey, Wireframes, User Testing
Used an iterative process to define a structure for the digital solution and then created paper prototypes to get user feedback. This helped us refine our product and create a more intuitive experience.
Profe’s Value Proposition
The product was designed based on extensive user research, user testing and a competitive analysis of existing language learning apps such as Duolingo.
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Profe is a profession-specific language support app for people seeking jobs in construction, restaurants and other services. With Profe, users can quickly learn critical phrases and develop the confidence needed to operate in their industry.