Designing for refugees: insights from design workshop

Newcomer refugees face enormous challenges on their arrival in host countries to start their new lives. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteers play a vital role in helping newly arrived refugees meet their needs during their process of resettlement. ICT can facilitate social interactions between refugees and NGOs, thus supporting refugees' connections within the host community. This study focuses on evaluating an initial prototype that has been designed to support social interaction between refugees and NGOs in a host community. We present the findings from a design workshop with seven newcomer refugees from Iraq. Following the workshop, we interviewed the head of an NGO and two volunteers. We found that participants face problems in finding information, getting jobs, and connecting with members from the host community. Based on these results, we offer three main design concepts that will guide us to improve our initial prototype in future work to support the social interaction between refugees and NGOs.