In late February 2022, Russian forces invaded neighboring Ukraine, setting off the largest and fastest-growing humaniatarian crisis since World War II. Millions of Ukranians, mostly women and children, fled their homes seeking safety in the countries of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary. These countries faced an unprecidented strain on their database systems to find accommodations within their borders.
Sabre employees in Poland (all volunteers), reached out to the global UX team for help. They required three key features:
- Make the software easy for new volunteers to jump right in and enter family information quickly and easily. They want to take care of people, not papers.
- Work with the existing validation software to validate hosts accommodations.
- Make the long data table of guests, hosts, and accommodations searchable and filterable.
Research/Discovery
As the project lead, I partnered with another Sabre UX designer, UX researcher, as well as a Developer based in Poland, to work with a European NGO on how best to help them manage the data from huge amounts of people seeking shelter.
First, we interviewed the lead volunteer staffer and looked at their exisiting input form to see what is being entered. We discovered there were large amount of open-ended text inputs on the guest forms that could not be organized or sorted. This made the volunteer’s job much more difficult to find a place for a family.
Second, we put together a workflow to show the amount of information entered, or not entered, that is critical for the volunteers. During this time, we also began the exploration of family member inputs to help speed up the process of entering names of persons traveling together.
Unfortunately, just as we were getting into the research and processes of the project, the entire effort was cancelled due to internal discussions within the NGO on ownership and development resources. Not the way we wanted to end the partnership, but we respected their decision and still admire their resolve to help the people of Ukraine find safe accommodations while the conflict rages on.
Exising accommodation input form, data table, and host search results (slideshow)
Stickies of missing items/info
Task/user flow