Expat Journal

A social media to connect with other expats and discover new places.

From research to prototyping.

Discovery process for Expat Journey. Diving in research as a UX Designer.

I chose Expat Journey as my app for this Build Week. As soon as I read the name, I thought it would be a good match for me as I am an expatriate myself. I had to focus on the mindset of a UX Designer and try to research reliable data to put together the idea of how Expat Journey would be.

Following what we learned at Lambda, I started with short surveys and gathered demographic data to identify suitable participants. As I went directly to expatriate groups, I knew most of them would be a match. Despite that being true, I still had to narrow the targeted profile to create a user profile.

Next, I worked on a product plan. I had stakeholder interviews and decided on a set of frustrations and goals to frame this webapp.

Now, I could put together some ground information to start building more specific tools to work towards creating Expat Journey. I created a user persona, Carla Vera, that combined different aspects of the candidates and focused a lot on how the participant answered the interview question. I will probably conduct 2 more interviews so I can be able to design another user persona so we can potentially work with a broader spectrum.

I still have research work to do, but I feel I’m on the right track towards defining the essential aspects to create an appealing app: Expat Journey.