UX Researcher and Designer
Winter 2020
While studying abroad in India in the Grand Challenges Impact Lab, hosted through the University of Washington's Civil Engineering department, my group tackled the question
"How might we decrease the exploitation of migrant workers in Bangalore's job market?"
During the 10 weeks of our program, we interviewed migrant workers and tested our idea to decrease the high levels of exploitation that migrant workers might face in their workplace through Navaranga, a system to increase migrant workers' independence in job seeking and finding resources.
FINAL DELIVERABLES
Check out our video.
Bangalore, a growing city of 12 million people, is a massive site of urbanization. Migrant workers arrive in Bangalore from all over India for work. They come from rural farmlands within the state of Karnataka, where the work is seasonal - or all the way from the north like Jaipur, or even Bangladesh. They need to migrate like this in order to raise enough money to support their families and build a house. The current informal system of job searching in Bangalore relies heavily on word of mouth. This process makes room for exploitation in terms of unfair pay, as their options are limited by who they know.
RESEARCH
This project was a study abroad program in India, called the Grand Challenges Impact Lab from the University of Washington. Our team was challenged to design a viable start-up with a financially sustainable business model. A core principle of our project was to make the service free for migrant workers, the desired beneficiaries of our project. To that end, we included marketable benefits for employers, and did research into the experience employers face in addition to the experience of migrant workers.
My role in this process was designing the study and showing my team how to develop findings from qualitative coding. Additionally, I created rapid prototypes to quickly test our solutions with users in a short time frame. Fun fact? I created three versions of the initial prototype - one in English, Hindi, and Kannada, the local language used in Bangalore.
literature review
Migrant workers are stuck in a labor economy that is “characterized by exploitative labor practices, unsafe working environments, inhumane living conditions with little access to basic amenities, and almost complete social exclusion.”
Many migrant workers lack access to resources such as housing, legal and health services
Migrant workers suffer from vulnerability to mental health problems. Extreme stress is a common condition, and leads to a large incidence of depression. This predictably evolves into high levels of alcohol use and substance addiction within migrant worker communities.
We found a compelling corroboration in our assessment of the needs of migrant workers from the Overseas Development Institute. The Institute also concludes that “practical areas for migrant support include improved access to market information, skills enhancement, certification of identity, remittances, housing and continued access to health, education and social assistance whilst ‘on the move’.”
interviews
Over 30 migrant workers, 16 employers, and 6 industry professionals were kind enough to participate in our interviews. 100% of these experienced members of the migrant worker/employer community recognized the importance of having connections in searching for a job, particularly as a migrant worker.
migrant worker findings
Nearly total dependency on their employers for services such as housing and food causes migrant workers to be underpaid compared to the local workers.
Many struggled when they first moved to find a job. Challenges included finding housing, adjusting to local food, and language barriers.
employee findings
The semi-nomadic nature of migrant work affects employers that have strict deadlines, as they lack a consistent supply of workers to finish the job.
The informal aspect of the job market culture makes employers rely on references from current employees to find new employees.
Heavy reliance on informal networks limits the efficacy of searching for new employees, which made employers an excellent market for our solution.
43% of employers relied on personal connections to find employees, and another 29% of employers paid contractors to find employees.
competitive analysis
We found that there were other existing platforms with which employers and job seekers used to connect. This included agencies that would sometimes specialize in specific occupations, in addition to other websites. However, we found them to have a couple of significant weaknesses:
(1) Narrow variety of types of jobs, in terms of both occupation and education-level requirements
(2) Information on the company or the type of job lacks knowledge that would help in decision making
DESIGN
To solve the problem, we decided to create Navaranga. The tools in our digital platform may prevent exploitation that currently results from limited connections and employer-dependence. Our app would give migrant workers independence to find their own jobs, not limited by personal connections, and the opportunity to seek resources if they need help. We also included a feature that would help find training to gain different skills. Another great feature is a communication exchange with an ability to directly message their current or potential employers. Our first prototype included the app in both Hindi and English.
information architecture
Information architecture, which informs the flow of user tasks throughout an application, was the first step in the design process. Features we wanted to include in the migrant worker’s accounts were: jobs, messaging, resources, and training. On the employer’s side, we included a place to post jobs, messaging, and employer-facing resources as well, so that they could have access to a variety of resources to help their employees.
low fidelity prototype
I used Figma to develop our low fidelity prototype. The annotated wireframe shows the many interactions the user can experience on the Jobs page, in both Hindi and English.
usability testing
We did usability testing with both migrant workers and employers. Something that I did not realize would be a challenge is doing usability testing through a translator. I prototyped the low fidelity mockup using Marvel, but then moved to Adobe XD for prototyping the high fidelity mockups.
Worker Usability Test Prompts
- Change the filter on the jobs page
- Go to the first saved job
- Look at the ‘trainings’ page
- Go to the Food Banks page under resources
Employer Usability Test Prompts
- Look at applicants for a 9-month job
- Select the first applicant then send them a message
- Go back to Jobs and look at the job description for the first job
iterations
Usability testing uncovered effective design improvements:
Feasibility in Features. Our minimum viable product is supposed to be feasible, and we found it reasonable to focus on two main features: the job posting and the resources. The messaging and training features are embedded into these two core features.
Accessibility for Language and Literacy. Since many languages are spoken in India, and many levels of literacy exist throughout the migrant worker community, we have:
(1) made the interfaces more pictographic, so that people navigate by meaningful icons
(2) included a helpline so that users on the application may call if they prefer verbal assistance
Most Effective Platform for Users. We learned that it would make more sense for the employers to have a website page of their own for posting jobs, as they would be using a computer for their businesses, so we added a website to our proposed solution.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Main screens of final mobile prototype.
Main screens of final desktop prototype.
REFLECTION
I learned two big lessons, one about working within an international context, and the other about working with a non-UX team. When working through translators during usability testing, I noticed that the translator would give me a very condensed version of what the user said, so I needed to ask the translator questions to get the whole story. Working in a non-UX team showed me how much I need to communicate about the process of UX. I needed to re-focus our efforts toward a good user experience in most decision points and was kind of a UX ambassador to make sure we were all doing good UX practice and getting actionable data when interviewing and usability testing.