Ukrainian Refugee Relief (live site)
When the Russian invasion happened in Feb 2022, I joined the urgent human crisis relief effort to design informational sites to help refugees from the Russo-Ukrainian war. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), United for Ukraine and Project Together will provide a platform for Ukrainians to request help with effective housing, legal support, and other issues as they seek refuge from the war.
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Tools used
Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator
Duration
A 6-month part-time project in collaboration with the international Rescue Committee and Google.org
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My Role and the team
Part-time designer contributing to the adoption of a new design system on the existing site
In this project I worked closely with the lead UX designer to craft a compelling message of the tool given it's new and unfamiliar to the users. I'm responsibility for the strategy, stakeholder management, the end to end product design process, and weekly leadership updates about the project.
Target Audience
Ukrainians and volunteers who are both getting through the current crisis and eventually in rebuilding the country
Design Outcome
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Build a scalable system / foundation for Signpost, Project Together and United for Ukraine to meet the growing demand and more effectively connect people with existing service providers, and ensure no one slips through the cracks
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Short term: build a “One Stop Shop solution” for refugees with information, about how to access legal support, crisis counseling and mental health support, temporary housing, among other services
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Mid term: We will add further offers to the one stop shop such as information about jobs, translation, child support, education, Community/Mentors, Anti-discrimination, medical support, Long term housing - depending on refugee needs
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Long term: building a global and cross border information and services support infrastructure connected to national NGOs/existing organizations that can support refugees at scale and goes beyond the war in Ukraine
Impact
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250,000 refugees helped to flee the war
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120,000 matched with temporary accommodation
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5,000 received 1:1 legal support
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5 years worth of progress in just 3 months of engagement
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To problem and its unique challegnes
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United for Ukraine is a tool built with part-time volunteer engineers that is collecting demand for housing assistance and legal aid from Ukrainian refugees. Volunteers work through each case to help manually connect people with the aid they seek. This model is providing immediate impact but is providing access to limited services and will not scale well. These volunteers also have direct contact with refugees and service providers on the front lines.
Given several websites were created in a rush by several voluntary organizations when the war broke up, they are struggling to scale their technical infrastructure and service delivery (how to effectively match ever more Ukrainians in need with the proper providers).
Information discovery
The sites were unorganized and hard for users to navigate to the right information especially under stressful environment
Trust and consistency
Individual sites need to feel authentic and consistent by bringing the visual experience to align with the ecosystem
User literacy
A lot of refugees are of women and children with lower literacy but the sites are highly technical and jargon-heavy
Technical debt
Scattered technical infrastructure is out of date and non-standard. Engineering resources are all of the world
The solution
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Combine IRC’s experience, rigor, and tools to deliver information (i.e. Signpost) with United for Ukraine’s service providers (third parties) around various refugee offerings (i.e legal aid, mental health, jobs, etc) to build global and cross border information and services support infrastructure.
​How do we get there
1. Short Term - United for Ukraine is already providing support for Ukrainian refugees today, so we will apply a universal design system to the current pages
2. Long Term - Build a cross-border and scalable information and services support tool to help refugees for the longer haul, connecting them to international asylum, more permanent housing & job boards
The design process
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To consolidate several websites under IRC, I applied Ant UI system across the pages to make it consistent, scalable, and maintainable
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Before
After
I proposed new user flows wherever applicable and explored top bar navigation
I then moved on to help redesign the navigation and search experience
In order to achieve a consistent flow from the I changed the home navigation with clearer information hierarchy
I redesigned the search bar navigation to optimize the search experience given their short attention span and urgency in getting to a result.
Final product
If we had more time, I would love to make improvements on...
User engagement
Due to the sensitivity of the user base (i.e., refugees) and the urgency of the launch, we couldn’t engage real users and have to design based on the feedback from the sponsors / our own assumptions
Localization
Ukrainian refugees usually don’t speak the language of the country where they reside. We have to apply the same layout from right to left without fully understanding the nuances
X-functional collaboration
This isn’t a problem that we can solve by one team. We can leverage on many other great Google products to be incorporated into the site (like map API)
Reflection
Was the project successful?
Yes but could be better. We met the original goal to help users find the right information in the fastest timespan that we could but that brought some compromise especially on the research front given the tight timeline and the sensitivity of the user profile.
What did I learn?
Understand the users, find ways to talk to them, it's okay to make assumptions but one has to find ways to validate them.
What this project says about me?
Adaptability - I was involved after a quick onboarding and created intuitive and simple product within the guidelines and design system of the team.
Self-learner - most of the materials and design tools are self-taught and I learn well by getting the hands dirty and doing it myself.
Empathy - although I've never been in a similar scenario as the condition faced by the refugees, I tried to put myself in their shoes. I felt deeply about the urgency and significance of this project and carried it out with my best effort possible.
Hey Gao Fang – Thank you so much for rolling up your sleeves and helping with UX design for the IRC x Google.org project. We really appreciated your help and collaboration!
- UX Manager
