Facebook Welcome — Simplifying refugee housing by enabling community members to offer temporary shelter through intuitive app interactions.

Problem

In North America, refugees face significant challenges integrating into local communities due to political climate and societal hostility. There's a pressing need for a service that fosters acceptance and aids in the seamless integration of asylum seekers.

Solution

Introducing “Facebook Welcome", a proactive feature leveraging Facebook's Crisis Response platform to empower users to educate themselves on the refugee crisis and offer assistance within their communities. This solution aims to bridge the gap between refugees and local communities, fostering a welcoming environment and facilitating integration through informed action.

Research

Prior to the development process, I began conducting thorough research of the refugee crisis, with a focus on North America. As I was given a timeframe of 4 weeks, I decided to scope my research to predominantly focus on North America. Given the political climate in America and the hostility received by refugees, there was a clear need for acceptance of diversity. The question proposed was - how do we design a service that provides asylum seekers a welcoming environment and affords better integration into our community?

The audience

Then, I began defining the target audience in the domain, which includes community members who are looking to help. I then formulated a list of user goals for the target audience. In order to further strengthen my research, I decided to conduct an interview with my user group in order to gather insights on their needs and current pain points. I did get a chance to interview someone who volunteers their time at Save the Children and works with refugees. The interview process allowed me to gain further insights and offered an understanding of opportunities where to intervene.

Opportunities

I then formulated a list of opportunities where we could intervene and offer services. I then narrowed it down to three different opportunities, each aiding a different pain point asylum seekers face once in a new environment:

1. Providing more tools to individuals in a local community looking to play a role in this large global crisis.

2. Easing the process of refugees integrating themselves within a new and foreign environment.

3. Easing the tedious and stressful challenge of refugees interacting and understanding local government.

A proactive solution

Facebook's new community-driven mission statement delivered in the summer of 2017 shows the social network's shift to a community-building approach. With Facebook Crisis Response, a feature that allows users to find information about the recent crisis, and allows users in the area to find and provide help thereby aiding the recovery effort. Facebook's Crisis Response approach currently is reactionary, whereby it only goes into effect after a crisis occurs. I decided on leveraging this feature and creating a more proactive approach - Facebook Welcome. This new feature fits well into their current ecosystem and allows users to educate themselves on the growing refugee crisis in turn allowing them to provide help and create an impact within their communities.

Their journey

I then began mapping out the user’s journey, addressing key touchpoints. Leveraging Facebook's feature of targeted content, Facebook is better able to target this feature to users interested in their new feature. The primary touchpoint being the application process. Through my research of various charity organizations, there was a correlation with regards to people who would like to volunteer to provide shelter, all of the organizations required users to fill information into a form. I then consolidated all the information required and presented it within a form.

01. awareness

Newsfeed

02. engage

About & Onboarding

03. application

Form

04. re-engage

Be Part Of A Larger Community

05. re-engage

Follow Up

06. finalize

Evaluation