There were many problems, so we heat mapped them out to understand patterns. Then we conducted prioritization based on technical feasibility to solve, political feasibility, and user and business value. The top frustrations related to the myriad of ways a refugee case could get held up in holds, security checks, and slow data sharing that caused delays, rework, and emotional distress for officers.
The first problem we chose to tackle as we built the MVP was the lengthy, untracked holds process. With so many systems and constantly changing policy regarding holds, refugee cases could get so delayed they required a re-interview, creating further work for officers.
I created a service blueprint to map out the process a held case goes through in the field and back at HQ with the various actors, front stage and backstage systems it touches. This involved further contextual inquiry interviews with the various officers in charge of certain holds, higher up stakeholders, and policy officers.
Part of the service blueprint
Because ROs often switch roles between when they are in the field interviewing and when they are back at HQ resolving holds, we created proto-personas that were loosely defined to roles when wireframing ideas. The team conducted several design studios with rounds of dot voting to identify top features to include.
Following the principles of lean UX, we created several low-fidelity prototypes for isolated features to conduct rapid usability tests with. I generated hypotheses for what we expected users to understand and criteria for actions they would undertake to validate those assumptions. The first personas we targeted were officers back at HQ in charge of a specific region due to the predominance of HQ holds and higher potential of hold resolution.
Lean prototype (Left), Assumptions tracker created to validate design hypotheses in usability testing (Right)
At the culmination of my fellowship, I presented my work to the top humanitarian immigration officials in the US . My time at USCIS taught me a lot about working lean and de-risking successively as I validated assumptions and was in constant touch with users. Being in such a highly-charged and politicized environment also developed my ability to facilitate structured discussions to come in alignment with stakeholders.
Continued goals for the system as the MVP is further built upon include:
- Reduce case processing time post-USCIS interview
- Reduce time for HQ to receive case data from the field
- Reduce number of cases requiring re-interview
- Reduce the amount of time spent on non-core adjudicative work
