UCI Designathon
2025
Creating a VISA Management App
A visa management app that replaces confusion and anxiety with clear guidance, real-time tracking, and support for anyone navigating the U.S. immigration system.
The Designathon
"Beyond Our Horizons"
The Question
How can we push the boundaries of how we engage with the world by leveraging emerging technology and artifical intelligence to design inclusive, human-centered systems?
Why the U.S. VISA process?
The U.S. visa process is confusing, slow, and often frightening for the people going through it. With rising concerns about visa revocations over minor errors and unclear bureaucratic requirements, many applicants feel overwhelmed and unsupported. This project set out to design an app that simplifies visa applications and renewals through clear step-by-step guidance, real-time status updates, and accessible resources, reducing anxiety in a process that offers very little transparency today.
Problem
People navigating U.S. immigration face a system that's difficult to understand and easy to get wrong. Our research surfaced four consistent pain points:
Confusion & lack of transparency — complex terminology and unclear instructions leave users unsure what's actually required
Stress & uncertainty — long, opaque processing times make it hard to know where an application even stands
Limited access to help — timely assistance is hard to find when something goes wrong
Fear of revocation — many worry a minor, unclear mistake could put their status at risk
These aren't simply usability gaps, as they can become a source of real, ongoing anxiety for the people affected.
Research
Understanding our user research and findings
We gathered insight from international students, families with immigrants, and U.S. citizens through surveys, interviews, and reporting on recent visa-related news.
100% of respondents agreed the current process is difficult to navigate, citing bureaucratic language, excessive paperwork, and a lack of transparency
75% of citizen respondents personally knew someone on a visa or green card show that this issue touches a wide network of people
Awareness of existing support systems was very low, with most respondents rating their own knowledge at the bottom of the scale
Every participant believed a secure, tech-based solution could meaningfully ease the burden of managing immigration status
This told us the opportunity wasn't just to organize information better but in addition, to build trust and reduce fear through transparency.
Ideation
Interface developments
Lo-Fi sketches of PATHWAY
Considering this project was built in a 3-day designathon, our process had to be expedited by necessity.
As opposed to extensive prototyping and multiple rounds of testing, our team made fast, deliberate calls regarding deisgn tradeoffs and choices to highlight
Prioritized landing on one cohesive concept that included all our ideas over refining individual screens
Designs
Features of Pathway
A look at the final design that bring these solutions to life.
Lessons
What this experience taught me
This was one of my first designathons, so I was still learning how to work efficiently as a team. Aligning fast with five other people, dividing work, and trusting teammates' calls under time pressure was its own skill, separate from the design itself.
Constraints forced real prioritization. With only 3 days, we couldn't design everything, so we focused on the features tied most directly to our research instead of what seemed most exciting to build.
Designing for fear and uncertainty is different from designing for convenience. This wasn't a "nice to have" app. Real anxiety about legal status shaped decisions like tone of language and what information to surface first.
AI features need boundaries, not just capability. Designing the Immigration AI chat meant thinking through what it should confidently answer versus when it should point users to a real advisor, since accuracy carries real consequences here.
Research narrowed our decisions instead of slowing us down. Having clear pain points identified early meant we spent our limited time deciding how to build well, not debating what to build.
