Designing an engaging online platform experience for Latin Americans who migrate to Australia
Somos21 is a not-for-profit organisation promoting greater connection and collaboration between students, early career professionals and career changers across Australian and Latin America. They host regular events and run an online platform to facilitate networking.
This platform was established to address the visible gap, in Australia and Latin America relations that will lay the foundations for stronger relations in coming decades.
The Problem
The majority of their users logged into the platform once and then never returned. They wanted to know why this was the case, encourage users to log in more often, and become financially self-sufficient.
They built using HiveBrite, a white labelled online community platform, they had not done any usability testing and wanted to understand why engagement was so low.
How can we provide relevant information to the migrants so that the engagement of website would be increased?
Our Approach
Though we were guided by double diamond approach, we started this project with many thoughts on connection and collaboration between Students and professionals. To challenge these thoughts, we browsed for all existing opportunities and Facebook pages in Australia.
We also conducted 1–1 interviews with people who migrated to Australia from Latin America, analysed website analytics and Facebook analytics of the platform.
My Role
My role was involved in every phase of UX process.
Research on consultancies who attract Latin Americans.
Facebook groups.
1–1 interviews.
Personas/ Journey Mapping
Organised workshops
Ideation
UI Design
Outcome
Within a 2-week sprint, we designed an overlay experience by adding few features to the job application page from the interviews conducted.
We added features like visa requirements, part-time job opportunities, contact information. Furthermore, we added 2 CTA buttons on the homepage which are clear to navigate to the inner pages easily.
RESEARCH
We focused on interviewing Latin Americans who moved to Australia, we began scheduling interviews and also researching on other initiatives who help Latin Americans settle in Australia.
To understand more about their product and members, we conducted a workshop with the client. This was conducted remotely via zoom in Miro.
5W’s and H
Who, Why, Where, What, When and How
We then conducted 1–1 interviews and analysed data from the platform’s user database and Facebook Analytics.
Existing Opportunities
We discovered a range of initiatives, including:
Student scholarships in to help pay for studies in Australia
Recruiters attracting Latin professionals who work in industries with skill shortages
Facebook groups which organise social and cultural events
Facebook groups and group chats advertising industry-specific job vacancies
Interviews
We spoke to 9 Latin Americans who moved to Australia to find out what motivated them to relocate, what challenges they faced, and what helped them.
“I moved to Australia searching for a better quality of life”
“It’s been difficult financially”
“It is helpful to know someone who is from here to guide you, ideally Australian”
We also interviewed 2 volunteers from the organisation to understand their role better.
Platform Data
Somos21’s platform contained a variety of information on its 1067 users’ demographics, including country of origin, Australian working rights, and professional industry. We mined the data to uncover trends and insights.
Facebook Analytics
We also accessed information from the company’s Melbourne-based Facebook page to see which types of content were getting the most engagement.
In the last 12 months, 450 users had viewed the organisation’s posts on job vacancies and 5% had clicked on them. 3884 had viewed their events, and 10% had expressed interest in them.
INSIGHTS
LATIN AMERICANS
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Many of the Latin Americans we interviewed expressed a desire to integrate with the local culture and language, however they struggled to form close relationships with Australians. The majority of them relied on building rapport within communities to help set themselves up.
SOMOS21 VOLUNTEERS
Keeping connected
Somos21’s volunteers were typically Australians who had spent time in Latin America and wished to stay a part of the Latin community by giving back.
“I wanted the Latin American experience in Melbourne”
“Things are moving a lot better than they used to”
“The work is remote, and I struggle with self-motivation”
IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES
Collating our research insights, we sought to identify which personas have contact with Somos21, what their biggest pain points are, and which opportunities existed to add value to their journey.
4 PERSONAS
2 JOURNEY MAPS
Defining personas
Reviewing our research data and clustering our insights, we identified 4 personas who came into contact with the organisation.
Jose, Miguel and Andrea are Latin Americans who have moved to Australia, each in different industries and with different working rights, while Sarah is a Somos21 volunteer from Australia.
By forming these personas, we could identify which Somos21 members could most benefit from changes to the platform and focus on alleviating their pain points.
Focusing on Jose’s journey
We decided to map out Jose’s journey to find where we could add the highest value to him.
We chose to focus on Jose as he had the most considerable number of needs which matched what Somos21’s events and platform aimed to help with: we assumed he would have the greatest commercial benefit.
Using insights from our interviews, we created Jose’s journey map to show the steps, emotional responses, and pain points he encounters as he settles in Melbourne and tries to find work in a company which will sponsor him.
Pivoting from Jose
We presented the 4 personas and Jose’s journey map to the client, but the client was unconvinced that we were going down the most gainful path by focusing on Jose. Their intuition doubted whether Jose really represented the majority of Somos21 users.
That left us with the question:
Re cutting the data
We took a deeper dive into the platform data and found that most of the Latin American members in Australia were either on student visas, or were citizens or permanent residents.
We correlated the visa statistics with the visas our personas held to identify which persona represented the greatest portion of users:
Miguel’s journey and opportunities
We pivoted to focus on Miguel’s journey, as he represented the largest segment of users which we had collected research insights on.
We mapped out his journey from arriving in Australia through to looking for part-time work and used this to identify Miguel’s most difficult step.
Ideation
After establishing Miguel’s journey, we focused on the opportunities available in Miguel’s most painful stage of his journey — failing to secure a part-time job in his industry.
Chris facilitated a remote co-design workshop with our team and a key stakeholder to come up with a solution.
OPPORTUNITY
How might we help Miguel find work in his industry?
We focused on this statement as this was where the client felt the organisation could help Miguel the most.
We conducted 2 rounds of “Crazy Eights”: the group sketched their ideas on paper before presenting them, then voted on their favourite ideas in Miro. In the second round, they merged the best ideas from the first round into a solution before presenting and voting again.
WINNING SOLUTION
Provide Miguel with free access to the jobs portal
This was the winning solution. We were to remove the need for a paid membership to access Somos21’s jobs board and investigate how the jobs board could be improved to better cater for Miguel’s needs.
Testing & prototyping
We sourced testers who fit Miguel’s persona and conducted current state testing with them. Using their insights, we could identify Miguel’s pain points on the platform and how it could be improved to help him find relevant work.
We produced a Figma prototype to improve the jobs board experience for Miguel, testing and iterating until validated.
10 Testers
4 pages modified
3 iterations
BEFORE
Current state testing
First impressions of a homepage
“I don’t understand what they are offering.”
“I’d prefer to see a photo of my city instead of people having fun.”
1 out of 4 testers had a positive first impression
Where would you go to look for jobs?
“No clue.”
0 out of 4 testers could access job opportunities on the site
Onboarding process
“How long does it take to get a verification email? I don’t think I will get it today.”
2 out of 3 testers became frustrated by how long it took to receive the email
First impressions of jobs board
“Why are jobs from Peru here? I want jobs in Melbourne.”
3 out of 4 testers were expecting to see jobs in their current location
Filtering jobs
3 out of 4 testers couldn’t apply filters
4 out of 4 testers wanted to search by keyword
Creating the prototype and iterating
From current state testing, we identified Miguel’s pain points when using the site:
- The homepage hero imagery didn’t appeal to Miguel
- Miguel didn’t know where to go to find job vacancies
- When he was shown to the “job opportunities” page, Miguel struggled to find relevant opportunities in his city.
We started by sketching out wireframes of possible solutions to these pain points. We then transferred these into Figma as low-fidelity prototypes and tested and iterated the prototype twice, validating the features and design through testing.
AFTER
Prototype features
First impressions of the homepage
“Very professional. It looks so neat”
3 out of 3 testers had a positive first impression of the site
Where would you go to look for jobs?
“Fortunately, now it’s very easy to find”
6 out of 6 testers could access job opportunities on the site
First impressions of job opportunities page
“It is perfect — I like it, I like it so much”
5 out of 6 testers had a positive first impression of this page
Job summary tile
“I love that it has the visa requirements!”
3 out of 3 testers said the information in the job summary was useful
Filtering by visa requirements and job type
“I want to be able to filter by visa requirements”
“I want a way to look for part-time jobs”
6 out of 6 testers could apply the filters
Job details pop-up
“I like that it has the contact information”
“I like that it appears as a pop-up page”
3 out of 7 testers wanted to see the contact details of the employer
Outcome
The client is in discussions with their developers to modify the platform as per the prototype.
They have also dropped their membership model and are looking to generate revenue via corporate sponsorships. This way they can achieve financial independence without putting strain on their most vulnerable member group.
“The amount of work you’ve done in such a short space of time, the depth, the look of it — everything is just amazing. This gives us direction and is really good information to have right now.”
Kate Bennett
CEO of Somos21
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