📄 Notice-to-Appear form


🔍 How might we rapidly deliver value as a newly formed team, utilizing a discovery and framing approach. 


🏛️ Client: U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) 
🗓️ Timeline: September 2023 -March 2024 (6 months)
🧑🏽‍💼 Role: Product Designer
🚨 NDA Project: New designs and system names are not included

Overview

This project aimed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of post-adjudication processes for refugee and asylum seekers at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). I joined a newly formed team tasked with this challenge and led them through a successful Discovery and Framing process. This enabled the team to swiftly identify a critical user pain point, develop a solution, and pilot it within a short timeframe.

Why this system matters?

This project involved the creation of a new system that digitally generates NTAs by automatically populating form fields with data extracted from an existing system, significantly reducing manual effort and improving accuracy. This system is critical because accurate and efficiently completed NTAs are crucial for the smooth and timely processing of immigration cases. (See previous system to the right.)

The stakeholders:

  • RAIO Office of Innovation and Design for Enhanced Adjudication (IDEA)

  • USCIS portfolio leadership

USCIS portfolio leadership and RAIO IDEA staff play crucial roles in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of USCIS operations. Portfolio leadership provides strategic direction and oversight, while IDEA staff focuses on managing the implementation of tools that focus on adjudication efficiencies and process improvements.

My team:

  • 1 Product Manager

  • 2 Product Designers

  • 4 Software Engineers

Learning Objectives

  • Objective #1

    Identify key stakeholders, pain points, success metrics, and potential risks and assumptions

  • Objective #2

    Develop a shared understanding of user needs and pain points within the asylum adjudication process

  • Objective #3

    Identify the top pain point to resolve that will have the greatest impact on improving the adjudication process

Stakeholder Interviews

To gain a deep understanding of the challenges faced by stakeholders within the post-adjudication process for refugees and asylum seekers, I facilitated a kickoff meeting with key decision-makers from USCIS portfolio leadership and the RAIO IDEA office. This collaborative session aimed to:

  • Identify critical pain points: Uncover the most significant obstacles hindering the efficiency and accuracy of current processes.

  • Explore opportunities: Discover potential avenues for improvement and innovation within the existing system.

  • Define shared success metrics: Establish clear, measurable goals for both short-term and long-term project success.

Stakeholder analysis

🖥️ Overall pain-point: Limited system integration

Asylum seekers and refugees face prolonged case processing times due to fragmented systems across agencies. These systems lack seamless data sharing and document transfer, leading to increased manual effort, potential errors, and delays in receiving crucial decisions.

📝 Lack of Automation

Many critical aspects of the adjudication workflow remain heavily reliant on manual processes, including paper-based forms and inefficient data entry. This results in significant delays, increased operational costs, and a higher potential for human error.

🏆 Focus Area: Automating NTAs

Stakeholders identified automating the NTA form as a “Quick Win”. Automating NTA generation would minimize the time spent by staff on repetitive data entry and Minimize the risk of human error.

Screenshot of pain-points identified in the kickoff meeting

Screenshot of pain-points identified in the kickoff meeting

Screenshot of short-term and long-term success metrics identified in the kickoff meeting

Screenshot of short-term and long-term success metrics identified in the kickoff meeting

User Interviews

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the pain points users were facing, I conducted 10 interviews with Asylum and Senior Asylum Officers to understand their workflows, challenges, and pain points. Since our stakeholders wanted us to focus on automating NTAs first, we focused mostly on NTA related questions to validate that this was in fact an issue and determine what parts of the NTA should be prioritized first. I also included our developers in these interviews to foster shared empathy within the team.

User pain-points

😖 Frustration among NTA form generation process

  • Newer asylum officers faced challenges in determining the specific information required for each NTA form, as the necessary details vary significantly based on case type and charges.

  • Asylum officers had issues addressing formatting issues in the previous system due to limitations in the document template.

⌨️ Redundant data entry

Asylum officers are required to manually re-enter applicant data into NTA forms, even though much of this information is already captured in other systems they utilize. This redundant data entry leads to inefficiencies, increases the risk of errors, and causes significant delays as Senior Asylum Officers must frequently return NTAs to Asylum Officers for revisions.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Longer process for families

The current process for generating NTAs for applicants with multiple dependents is significantly prolonged due to the limitations within the current system, which only permits the generation of one document per individual at a time. This necessitates multiple individual document generation steps, leading to increased processing time and decreased efficiency.

Problem priotization

  • Collaborated with the team to translate identified pain points into actionable problem statements

  • Facilitated workshop to prioritize problem statements using a 2x2 impact-effort matrix

  • The workshop allowed the team to effectively communicate and align with stakeholders, enabling the team to move forward with a defined problem statement

The Problem

Asylum staff have a problem generating post adjudication decision documents because not all applicant data is being mapped and pushed between systems.

This causes Asylum staff to spend additional time identifying missing fields, searching for and manually adding missing data, which affects accuracy of data due to potential human error. 

Product Goals

  • Reduce manual data entry

    Streamline asylum officer workflows by automating data entry tasks, freeing up time for critical decision-making.



  • Improve the accuracy and consistency of post-adjudication documents

    Enhance the quality and reliability of post-adjudication documents through standardized templates and automated data extraction.

  • Decrease processing time for asylum cases.

    Accelerate the adjudication process for asylum cases by streamlining workflows, automating tasks, and leveraging technology.

Technical Research

The team Initiated an evaluation of four existing systems to identify a platform that supported seamless data integration and document editing, with a focus on optimizing user experience and minimizing development effort.

During this evaluation, a policy change was announced, significantly increasing the number of people seeking asylum. This shift heightened the urgency for delivering a timely solution

Challenge: Technical constraint

  • Policy change led stakeholders to prescribe which system to use, hindering teams ability to complete exploratory research 

  • Team did not believe prescribed system was the optimal solution

How I helped:

  • Facilitated workshop to identify and discuss key risks and areas where we need to conduct more research

  • Enabled team effectively communicate and address project risks with stakeholders

  • Coached developers on how to de-risk solutions by pairing with other teams to gain a better understanding of codebase

Challenge: Low team morale

Team had low morale due to:

  • Lack of autonomy in decision-making after being prescribed a system to use

  • Frequent team changes

  • Unclear timelines

How I helped:

  • Facilitated team health check to address underlying issues that were causing friction and delay on the team

  • Workshop created a psychologically safe space for team to share feedback and helped the team realign on goals

Design & user testing process

Developed a prototype (not able to show due to NDA) and gathered feedback from stakeholders and users

  1. Prioritized design improvements based on user needs and development effort.

  2. Iterated on design to finalize minimum viable product (MVP)

Lean experiment

  • Aligned with stakeholders on conducting a lean experiment to validate system assumptions and achieve product goals.

  • Collaborated with the team to define clear objectives and success metrics for the lean experiment

  • Collaborated with stakeholders to select a pilot office

  • Scheduled a two-week pilot with 18 participants

  • Developed a pre- and post-pilot survey to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback

  • Established a dedicated Microsoft Teams channel for participant support and ongoing feedback

Results

Successfully identified and prioritized a critical user pain point: Asylum officers struggled to generate post-adjudication decision documents due to manual data entry and inconsistent data mapping between systems.

  • Developed and piloted a solution: Designed and implemented system that automated 40% of the NTA form fields, significantly reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.

  • Validated key assumptions: The pilot successfully demonstrated the feasibility and user acceptance of the new system.

  • Empowered the team: The team gained valuable experience in applying a structured approach to problem-solving, conducting user research, and delivering value rapidly.

  • Enabled client growth: The client designer successfully applied the learnings from this project to lead future Discovery and Framing sessions independently. She was also hired full-time based on learnings and deliverables from this engagement.

  • Company Award: Recognized with VMware's "At Your Best" award for my outstanding contribution to the project.