This week we’ve had two interesting meetings. We went to Restad Gård where we met Inaam and Alaa who are voluntary workers in a self-organising group with and for newly arrived migrants in Sweden. They informed us about their work at this large refugee camp currently hosting 1250 asylum seekers. The group is engaging in all sorts of daily activities for the inhabitants there, from sports to language courses. We met up in their computer room to make a usability study with a little group of 14 Arabic speaking persons. They tried out an existing language learning application on phones for 15 minutes in a usability test. Afterwards we discussed what they would like to learn about Sweden and the potentials of the mobile phone as a tool for that.
The day after, we went to a Swedish as a Foreign Language school in Alingsås to meet more Arabic speaking migrants who had just started their first Swedish course a couple of days before. We are engaging them in a 4-week-study of another existing language learning application, where they will test functionalities. We will meet them continuously and interview them. It’s really rewarding going out on field studies.