This thesis explores how to create infographics to improve access to essential services for immigrants who face language barriers. It proposes a co-creation workflow that combines the power of target communities, experts, and language-model AI to visualize service procedures.
Language barriers are among the top barriers blocking new immigrants’ access to essential services in Canada, affecting their overall well-being. Applying the Research through Design (RtD) methodology, this research addresses this problem through a design activity following a Design Thinking process. It introduces the design challenge, the language barriers, and unpacks their impacts through literature review and the author’s experience. By scanning and analyzing current solutions, this research converges on the potential solution: infographics. To explore this potential solution, the design activity diverges to examine multiple design considerations from different perspectives through secondary research and contextual work analysis. With the design considerations of ethical, social, and environmental impacts, and combining the feedback from the settlement service experts, the design activity concludes with a workflow as the proposed solution. This workflow includes three components: a series of co-design workshops with the target community, an AI-assisted web platform that accelerates collaboration between settlement service providers and graphic designers, and a mechanism for gathering feedback and initializing iterations.
This workflow sets the foundation for future research and design activities, including conducting the co-design workshop, developing the collaborative platform, and testing the output infographics.