spec - v1

[aymannadeem]

Kicked it with @jglovier and brainstormed a framework for an MVP. Here's the first draft of a v1 spec:

Motivation / Problem

Existing online resources on immigration law are not user-friendly or accessible:

• It's hard to know which sites are reputable based on a raw Google search.
• The dense text and poor user experience of sites produced by government and law firms make it tough to find relevant information.

Immigration policies are in flux due to the current political climate, and the need for access to relevant information (FAQs and contact to lawyers) based on status in the U.S. and citizenship has become more pressing.

The following use-cases demonstrate the information gap:

• If someone wants to immigrate to the U.S., how do they learn about that process, let alone start it?
• If someone has a vulnerable standing (ie., citizenship from 7 "terrorist" nations, undocumented, etc.), where do they go to access legal help or gain a basic awareness of their rights?

Goal

Develop YourHaq to allow users to:
a) find immigration resources quickly and easily based on their status in the U.S. and their citizenship.
b) contribute valuable, relevant information based on policy changes (CMS)

Next steps

• Figure out flow and corresponding info architecture (ask users if they know their status, if they don't, help them identify it, and once they do, figure out what resources/info is most relevant
  1. What is my status?
  2. What do current immigration situations mean for my status?
• Build table of status information (https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/immigration-terms-and-definitions-involving-aliens)

Open questions

• How to get people to contribute high quality content? (ex., having a form / suggestion box)?
• Do we have some way to vet info?

Examples of resource sites

• Leafly
• ISideWith

cc @irishbryan

[wassemgtk]

Which is still not clear to me, is the target here, lawyers or individuals?
And if they are individuals Are you targeting people within the approval process or who wish to emigrate?

[aymannadeem]

Thanks @wassemgtk—definitely agree that the "who" needs to be clarified.

Users will include both individuals seeking information, and lawyers willing to provide it. Individuals seeking help/guidance can be at any point in the process: they are either wishing to immigrate, are already in the process, or are an alien in this country that might be vulnerable given their background.

Let me know if I can clarify that further.

[dmleong]

Users will include both individuals seeking information, and lawyers willing to provide it.

Thanks for this spec, it was really helpful! ✨ @aymannadeem would it be beneficial to have two portals here? I'm imagining a hero element at the top of the page that points people to "I need help with immigration" and "I can provide help"

[aymannadeem]

@dmleong yesss, that definitely helps steer different users toward what they're arriving at the site for. @jglovier is figuring out some information architecture, curious to see what his thoughts are there.

[dmleong]

@jglovier, let me know if you need any help with that!

[jglovier]

@dmleong thanks! I'm going to put together a rough IA map and post it here. Your feedback once I have that posted will be super helpful.

Then, once we have nailed down the right IA, I can work out some UX wireframes for the individual pages of the site. Again, all feedback in that process will be appreciated. 😊 ✨ 🙇

[jglovier]

Just a quick update: I'm working on this and will have something to show here in the next couple days.

[jglovier]

Took a stab at the information architecture based on what we discussed, and the notes above:

Would love feedback on whether this diagram captures everything we should be thinking about at the IA stage.

(Sorry for all the doodling...it helps me think out the problems but I know it can be distracting)

[jglovier]

Next thing I'm going to do i start mocking up some low-fi wireframes to depict the content flow and navigation experience.

[aymannadeem]

@jglovier 😍 — your awesomeness never ceases to amaze me! Thanks for taking the time to do this. ⚡️

Some thoughts:

• Love disaggregation for those "seeking help" vs. "here to help others"—wondering if this fork in the hierarchy should be presented early (at the very top of the page), or if "Help build YourHaq" or "Contribute" or something along the volunteering lines should be at the bottom. I'm in favor of putting it at the bottom because it prioritizes users that need help, stripping away cognitive load of extra text that might be irrelevant to the most vulnerable, high-priority users in an emergency situation. What do you think?
• Love the idea of a quiz, but for v1, it might be worth to punt on and have an "I don't know" option that links to an external site that may help users identify. I'd deprioritize this for now (only because a quiz seems hard to build given the complexity of statuses), but if we can eventually have a quiz, that'd be rad! ✨
• Like that you've prioritized "what do I need to know" separate from "find legal services". Since our focus is "the most vulnerable people"—presenting knowledge about one's rights is important.
• Like your mention of a map given services index. I definitely think we should do some location specific filtering to give back relevant results. Where along the journey do you think we should ask users to specify location?
• Might be helpful to select your citizenship(s) in addition to status to give us a better understanding of resources we can give back to you. This might help us organize our data better in the background and build a matrix of resources that is both status-in-the-US and citizenship aware.

[aymannadeem]

@jglovier and others, as you work on this, the following examples may help clarify the type of users we're optimizing for:

Examples of what YourHaq aims to be able to do:

• Provide just-in-time help for those who might be in critical situations (ex., experiencing profiling at an airport, sent a deportation notice, denied a court hearing after your citizenship is revoked; need help immediately).
• Increase legal literacy to help individuals individuals know and protect their rights, particularly those most vulnerable to xenophobic travel bans.

[jglovier]

I'm in favor of putting it at the bottom because it prioritizes users that need help, stripping away cognitive load of extra text that might be irrelevant to the most vulnerable, high-priority users in an emergency situation. What do you think?

Yeah, that makes sense to me. We can include a subtle link at the top (perhaps just in the navigation is sufficient), but +1 on keeping the main content focused on help for resource seekers. 👍

Love the idea of a quiz, but for v1, it might be worth to punt on and have an "I don't know" option that links to an external site that may help users identify.

👍

I definitely think we should do some location specific filtering to give back relevant results. Where along the journey do you think we should ask users to specify location?

This could be another thing to punt on for v1, but ultimately if we have enough service providers in different locations, it could just be a thing we render based on the city location we request from legal service providers who wish to be added via the form. For users seeking to locate providers, it could be built into the site on it's own page. It could be probably powered by a simple GEO JSON map of the locations of providers.

Might be helpful to select your citizenship(s) in addition to status to give us a better understanding of resources we can give back to you. This might help us organize our data better in the background and build a matrix of resources that is both status-in-the-US and citizenship aware.

👍

[dmleong]

Also wanted to chime in that the volunteering section would probably be best served as either a top level nav item, or a footer note. As someone who is neither in need of immigration help, nor a lawyer, I would like to know how best to help in an efficient manner :)

Looking great @jglovier! ✨

[dmleong]

Would the volunteer section also benefit from having external links like how to help a hijabi if you witness Islamaphobia ?

[jglovier]

Just a quick status update - I was hoping to get the wireframes done this week, but looks like my schedule won't permit that. Readjusting my goal to have something to show here on that front by mid-next week.

[jglovier]

Here's a quick draft of the IA for the homepage. I would propose we sequence work into two phases:

1. some first pass updates at on the existing single page site experience
2. explore and implement a more comprehensive experience (multipage, including some of the features we're talking about punting on for the first phase update)

This wireframe is a stab at what the content outline for the first phase update could be like:

Thoughts/reactions? Are we missing anything? Is there anything here that doesn't need to be?

If this looks good, and once we finalize the content flow, then I'll explore some design comps.

---

@aymannadeem some responses to your comments above:

I'm in favor of putting it at the bottom because it prioritizes users that need help, stripping away cognitive load of extra text that might be irrelevant to the most vulnerable, high-priority users in an emergency situation.

Yup, that makes sense to me. 👍

Like your mention of a map given services index. I definitely think we should do some location specific filtering to give back relevant results. Where along the journey do you think we should ask users to specify location?

I was thinking about a map page (something you could get to by "search by location" perhaps), where the available providers are plotted on the map, and you can simply browse to your area. At least for starters that seems like a pretty simple experience to support, but was thinking of that as a step somewhere between phase 1 and phase 2, or possibly just as part of phase 2.

Might be helpful to select your citizenship(s) in addition to status to give us a better understanding of resources we can give back to you. This might help us organize our data better in the background and build a matrix of resources that is both status-in-the-US and citizenship aware.

Yeah, there's def some interesting things that could be explored with that, but probably makes sense to scope to phase 2?

[aymannadeem]

Met with @jglovier to revive the discussion on YourHaq's vision and next steps. ✨

Recap of meeting

• Recap: still think the goal of connecting users with resources to navigate changing US immigration makes sense, and is part of fulfilling a need that extends beyond the challenges of the current government.
• In that vein, pursuing the goal of making immigration resources transparent based on your status is still the UX direction we'd like to take.
• We're not immigration experts, nor do we want a complicated flow—but we want to figure out the minimum level of information we need our system to handle vs. things we want to offload to external resources we redirect users to.
• We should be a solution focusing users who are already in the US (and have some status), excluding users that are looking for information on how to immigrate (and maybe redirect them somewhere else?)

Next steps

• Compile list of all possible immigration status types
• Figure out where to redirect someone if they don't know their status
  • Is this self-created/summarized content we want to host, or something external?
• Start building the front-end experience

Questions

• What statistics are there on demographics of people on different status types in the US? (Out of curiosity)
• Do we want to use AirTable?
• Should we consider a Slack room? Right now, it can just be @jglovier and I messaging one another sporadically. 😄