Immigration
UX Design
Mobile App
A first-days companion for immigrants.
Groceries, health, money, and community — everything a newly-arrived immigrant needs to figure out, in one place, without having to ask a stranger where to start.
Role
UX Researcher and Interaction Designer
Timeline
2026, 8 weeks
OVERVIEW
The hardest part of moving somewhere new
isn't the move.
Kashti — meaning "boat" or "vessel" in Hindi and Urdu - is a mobile companion for people in their first weeks in a new country. It's the app you open before you know which grocery store carries what you need, before you understand the healthcare system, before you know anyone to ask.
Most resettlement resources are either institutional (dense PDFs, government portals) or scattered across forums and word of mouth. Kashti puts the essentials - groceries, health, money, and community - into one calm, guided space.
1
User research & interviews with recent immigrants
2
Persona development & journey mapping
3
Information architecture across 4 core pillars
4
High-fidelity design & usability testing
Research Process
Understanding the first-days experience.
• Users lose autonomy — they don’t trust AI systems they can’t override, no matter how accurate.
• Users lose autonomy — they don’t trust AI systems they can’t override, no matter how accurate.
• Users lose autonomy — they don’t trust AI systems they can’t override, no matter how accurate.
4
core needs: groceries, health, money, community
1st
month is when most resettlement stress peaks
2
currencies most users had to mentally juggle at once
I spoke with recent immigrants and international students about their first month in a new country - what confused them, what they wished someone had told them, and where they turned when they didn't know what to do.
Key Insight
People didn't need more information — they needed someone to tell them what mattered right now versus what could wait. The anxiety wasn't a lack of resources, it was not knowing which resource applied to today.
1
User research & interviews with recent immigrants
2
Persona development & journey mapping
3
Information architecture across 4 core pillars
4
High-fidelity design & usability testing
Problem Statement
Everyone's first week looks the same - and no one prepares you for it
New immigrants consistently described the same fragmented experience: figuring out grocery stores through trial and error, navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems without guidance, managing money across two currencies and banking systems, and feeling isolated with no easy way to find community from home.
1
Digitize scattered, word-of-mouth resettlement knowledge into one guided space
2
Reduce the anxiety of "not knowing what you don't know" in the first weeks
3
Make money management across currencies simple and transparent
4
Make money management across currencies simple and transparent
User Persona
Meet Aisha.
A
S
Aisha arrived three weeks ago to start her master's program. She's confident academically but feels quietly overwhelmed by everything outside the classroom — where to buy groceries that feel like home, how her student health plan actually works, and how to send money back to her family without losing a chunk of it to fees.
Confused by an unfamiliar healthcare/insurance system
Doesn't know which stores carry familiar ingredients
Losing money to poor exchange rates and fees
Hasn't found community from
Aisha
Graduate Student,
Week 2 in a New Country
•
•
PAIN POINTS
GOALS
Solution
Four pillars, one calm first month.
• Users lose autonomy — they don’t trust AI systems they can’t override, no matter how accurate.
Rather than one long onboarding flow, Kashti organizes around the four things people actually asked about — letting someone open the app and go straight to what's urgent today, whether that's finding dinner or understanding a doctor's bill.
FINAL EXPERIENCE
The completed design.
Four core flows, each designed to answer one urgent first-days question without requiring the user to already understand the system around it.
01.
Groceries
A map of nearby stores tagged by what they actually carry - including
specialty and home-country ingredients — so users don't have to guess
or wander.
Ingredient-tagged store listings
Community-sourced recommendations
02.
Health
Plain-language explanations of how local healthcare and insurance actually work, plus a directory of providers who speak the user's language.
03.
Money
A simple expense and transfer view that shows real exchange rates
and fees upfront, so sending money home never feels like a guessing game.
Transparent transfer comparison
Simple dual-currency budgeting
04.
Community
A directory of nearby cultural groups, events, and people from similar backgrounds — turning "I don't know anyone here" into a short list to start with.
IMPACT
What changed.
Early usability sessions with recent immigrants and international students showed the four-pillar structure reduced
the feeling of "not knowing where to start" compared to searching individually across forums, government sites, and
word of mouth.
Reduced Overwhelm
One guided space instead of scattered, disconnected resources
Faster Orientation
Users found relevant answers without asking around first
Community Access
Easier path to finding people from a similar background nearby
REFLECTION
Designing for restraint.
Designing Kashti reframed how I think about onboarding — not as a tutorial for a product, but as a tutorial for an entirely
new life. The real design challenge wasn't fitting features into screens; it was deciding what to leave out so someone
overwhelmed in their first week wasn't handed one more thing to figure out.
I learned that trust, for this audience, comes from plain language and transparency — showing the actual
exchange rate, the actual insurance terms — rather than from polish alone.
Home isn't a place yet.
It's a first step.
Feel settled without asking the same questions repeatedly
Send money home affordably and transparently
Find people and spaces that feel familiar
Understand her healthcare options clearly