Australia Refugee and Asylum Seekers (ARAS) Community is a mobile based application provides an online social community that makes connections between refugees and aid organisations. The situation this project addressed is refugees and asylum seekers may find themselves in a dilemma in their countries of asylum. Therefore, ARAS also creates an solution for refugees and asylum seekers who have language and communication barriers to locate and contact different types of supporting community in Australia.
The seriousness and complexity of the problems that are caused by the global asylum-seekers and refugee flow poses a significant challenge to the countries that are seen as the destinations, including Australia. Based on the Australian government’s statistics, the number of refugees and asylum seekers that Australia accepts has increased in recent years. As of 2015-2016, Australia accepted around 17,000 total refugees (Refugee Council of Australia, 2017).
Leaving their hometown and starting a life in a different country with a different language, different laws and different cultural expectations requires a period of adjustment. For those refugees and asylum seekers who suffer of this process, it will feel more difficult due to the circumstances under which they are leaving their home country. Some of them can’t apply for a valid refugee visa or find supporting organisations due to the language and communication barriers. Some of them also have ongoing mental health issues due to trauma.
For that, in order to make things easier, this platform empowers the refugees and asylum seekers to locate and contact the various organisations in Australia by translating the information into their own language. People who have survived are also able to share their experiences on this platform, which helps energies and inspire others. For the other hand, it also provides a platform for people who want to help refugee and asylum seekers. People can be connected in a personal way. Choose if you can offer help, such as form filling, language help or guiding. The platform creates a personal match and brings people into contact to each other. In order to allow more people to use this platform, we will identify our platform form by analyzing the results of our survey.
Assisting those who need help to settle / to start a new life in Australia, especially refugees and asylum seekers.
- Refugees / Asylum seekers who
- are happy to share their experience in Australia
- willing to talk to others
- searching for locations of organisations
- need help for applying visas
- need translation support
- People who are here to help the others
Despite the fact that the function of the ARAS Community is quite similar with some travel apps, such as TripAdviser and googleMap, it is still different from them. They focus on different groups of users. In addition, compared with other refugee aid apps, ARAS creates an online social platform that allows users interact with orhers.
Our team’s name is PUMPKIN. There are 3 people in team Pumpkin: Huy Nguyen, Choy Yiu Chun, Lingyun Xie.
| Member’s name | Student Number | Roles | Skills | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huy Nguyen | 44215639 | [email protected] | Full stack develope | HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript(include Jquery), Java, Python, ASP.net (C#), C++ |
| Choy Yiu Chun | 44126324 | [email protected] | Designer | Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Experience |
| Lingun Xie | 43787483 | [email protected] | Back end developer | HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python |
- Team Leader : Huy Nguyen
- Meeting Holder : Huy Nguyen
- Note Taker : Linyun Xie
- Work Schedule Planning : Yiu Chun Choy
- Conflicts (if any) will be resolved by voting
- logistics is everyone’s responsibility
We discuss the project on:
We share the project files on:
| Project Phase | Description | Deadline | Deliverable(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research | Evidence, backgrounds and target audience of the product, estimated population involved, proportion of different language users. (Prepare standup in week 8) | By the end of WEEK 7 | Survey/interview result; Requirement gathering; User personas; Use context |
| Design | Visualise the product in order for the coders to follow how it is built, making sure that the final products in each member’s mind are the same. | By the end of WEEK 8 (16 Sep) | Final logo design; Interface design; prototyping design; Low fidelity user testing Result |
| UX research | Test a bunch of potential customer by observing and asking designed questions to get inspiration and new findings so as to take final change(s) in terms of functionality of the app (if needed) before coding starts (Prepare standup in week 10) | By the end of WEEK 9 (23 Sep) | High fidelity user testing design; UX research statistics and comments (In case changes will be made after the UX research, final decision is needed for whether making change(s) or not); Finalised MVP |
| Development | Site/app implementation | By the end of WEEK 10 | High fidelity user testing result; Complete basic interface coding |
| Evaluation | Improve the project based on the testing result (Prepare standup in week 12) | By the end of WEEK 11 | Advertising tool; Conference poster; Refined prototype |
| Finalise | Final prototype demonstration | By the end of WEEK 12 | Display functionality, features and offerings |
#active communities
#awareness
#coordination/communication
#mobile social
#asynchronous interaction
#refugees and asylum seekers
#helpin other
#community
Refugee Council of Australia 2017, 'Report Of 2017 Annual Tripartite Consultations On Resettlement - Refugee Council of Australia', viewed 21 August 2017, < https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/2017/report-2017-annual-tripartite-consultations-resettlement/ >.