Go Dutchie

Project Type

Solo project - Product-based graduation thesis

My role

Product concept design, UX research & design

Timeline

March 14 2022 - Jun 19 2022

Tools

Figma

 

Review

GoDutchie is a product concept that I created for my Master graduation thesis. The aim of GoDutchie is to help ease Asian students’ pre-departure stress by providing personalized information before moving to the Netherlands. My initial motive to work on this topic was inspired by my working experience as a student ambassador at the Breda University of Applied Science. Since my job was to help students make their study decisions and to help prepare their journey, I encountered many Asian students who were going through tremendous stress whilst preparing their future move to the Netherlands. Therefore, I decided to start researching this issue further, which resulted in the development of the GoDutchie project.

 

Final product

 

Problem discovery

Asian students experience pre-departure stress because they do not receive adequate information support from the university during their pre-departure stage in coming to the Netherlands.

According to Nuffic (2022), International students reported a significant lack of information support from Dutch universities at their pre-departure stage. Without universities providing sufficient information at the beginning of a students’ transition, it have negative effects on a students’ pre-departure preparation and may even lead to them having difficulty integrating into the host culture.


Define the problem

After considerable research, Asian students’ challenges during pre-departure stage were defined as:

  1. Unfamiliarity with accurate information management

  2. Unfamiliarity with the European immigration process

  3. Significant language barrier to both Dutch and English

  4. Inaccurate and / or outdated information on the universities website

  5. Unfamiliarity with the workings of the Dutch education system

To conclude, a “lack of information support from the university“ is the main reason that caused students’ a lot of pre-departure stress.

 

Why Asian students?

Among the international student body, Asian students are considered more vulnerable as they are more likely to experience issues with adjustment.

There are three main reasons for this:

  1. Asian students have the most difficulty adjusting to Western culture due to cultural differences, language barrier and prior learning experiences

  2. Asian students are found less likely to express their frustrations and openly admit to needing support

  3. Asian students are more likely to experience stress due to their collective nature

 

The goal

To help reduce Asian students pre-departure stress to the Netherlands with quick and accurate information support by developing an app with an AI chatbot.

Solution

A multi-platform AI chatbot aimed at providing personalized pre-departure information to Asian students.

What personalized information can GoDutchie provide?

  • Legal and immigration information

  • Information related to the specific partner university

  • Checklist of necessary pre-departure preparations

 

Research Method

Semi-structured interview

The interviews with the 10 participants were conducted in the period of 23 May to 28 May 2022. Each interview lasted about 35 minutes on average. Most of the interviews were conducted in Mandarin due to the preference of participants. While discussing the topic of AI chatbots and GoDutchie, the prototype of GoDutchie was shown to participants. Participants were asked to interact with the prototype. The average interaction time was 5-8 minutes. After interacting with the prototype, a few more questions regarding the functionality of GoDutchie were asked.

 

Participants

  • 10 participants from Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and China.

  • Enrolled in higher education in the Netherlands

  • 21-28 years old

Interview questions were formed around three topics:

  • Pre-departure needs and stress

  • Information seeking behaviour

  • Experience with AI chatbots & evaluation of GoDutchie prototype

In order to answer the main question:

“How can the application of GoDutchie: AI chatbot provide information support to ease pre-departure stress to Asian students?”

 
 
 

Insight

To conclude the findings of the user evaluation research, the themes of the major insights are presented below.

Theme 1: Personalized information is the key

Most of the participants mentioned that personalized information would be the most desirable function of the app. They stated that they struggled with outdated information on university websites and some had difficulty filtering the right information they found online, such as the required documents for visa application. Therefore, being able to offer personalized information will be the primary strength of this application.

“The design of the chatbot can provide me with more personalized and accurate information. It would have been helpful to me as I was struggling with inaccurate information [on the university website]. - Participant 4”

Theme 2: Collaboration with universities and the government

Several participants stated they still prefer their university as the main source of information as it provides a sense of the reliability of the data. Hence, partnering up with universities and the official institutions can make the GoDutchie application more convincing to the users.

“I would trust the information that my university provides. So, if it’s in collaboration with my university, then I think it’s worth it. - Participant 3”

Theme 3: Lower trust towards the capabilities of an AI chatbot

The primary challenge of this application was the fact that some participants showed lower trust in an AI chatbots’ capabilities. As some mentioned, they did not know how much this application could provide an actual benefit to them. This may be due to a lack of experience in using AI chatbots. Besides, from a cultural aspect, people from Asia generally have a higher service demand; therefore, they show more tendency to seek assistance from real humans (Giraud, 2017).

“I’m not really sure about what this chatbot can do. I’m not really sure a chatbot can understand my words for example.- Participant 2”

 

Key feature

Step1 Personalized information is the key

Based on students’ nationality, university, located city, English level and their goals, GoDutchie is able to provide personalized information to answer students’ question with the help of NLP (Natural Language Processing).

 
 
 
 
 

  • Step 2 Explore the Topics that you are interested


Students can read information and explore topics such as housing, visa or food choices via this home page for user. They can also start conversation from this page.

 
 
 

  • Step 3 Start conversation with your buddy

Name your buddy first then you can start the conversation right away. Collaborating with Dutch universities and government, GoDutchie can provide updated and reliable information for students’ to better prepare their journey to the Netherlands.

 
 
 

User flow

 
 
 

Personas

I conducted user interviews with Asian students who are coming to study in the Netherlands, and created three personas based on their goals and frustrations.

 
 

Competetiors

The market position chart shows the existing products and / or services that aim to help international students with information support during their pre-departure stage. Square shapes represent internal competitors; ellipse shapes represent external competitors.

GoDutchie demonstrates its strong position in the market because its innovative selling point. And the most important thing is it provides reliable information for students.

REflection

This was my very first product design project. I really enjoyed working through the entire design process from A to Z. Here are some notes I would like to highlight after completing this project:

  • If I had more time, I would explore different possibilities and designs for an AI chatbot. In this project, I created three characters and tones of voice for an AI chatbot. This was mainly done because previous scholars found a positive connection between AI chatbots and users when the AI chatbot was build with a unique personality and tone of voice.

  • After the interviews with potential users, the findings stated that the users showed relatively low trust in the capabilities of AI chatbots’. This may be due to participants’ prior experiences with other AI chatbots, which can be challenging to overcome in a short time. Hence, it can be an interesting potential research topic to work on in this future as - within this research - the focus was mostly on the problem-based coping mechanisms to address the issue of lacking information support.