As migration increases the processes supporting migration boards as well as migrants face increasing demands for quality, effectiveness and efficiency. The Swedish Migration Board piloted the use of the VISUAL language in this complex area, where laws, international policies, multiple actors, and relationships are intertwined.
The VISUAL project supported the Migration Board in taking a service perspective on the process of spouses, registered partners or common law spouses moving together in Sweden, where one of them already is a resident.
The process of getting a resident permit when moving to a spouse involves a set of different actors, spread across several different locations globally. Moreover, the stakeholders in the process extends beyond the actors directly involved, as there are laws, policies and norms that direct the processes. Add to this, that the process can be done either electronically or by paper. Most importantly, there are at least two persons at the centre of the process, the spouses, that are required to share specific and personal information, but also need predictability of the process. All in all, this requires good synchronization and well-described processes.
The processes were decsribed using the VISUAL language, and insights highlighted through these descriptions were visualized with complementary techniques.
For the VISUAL-project working with the Migration Board clarified the need for specific constructs in the language, sepcifically answering to the needs of complicated public services.
The project is an innovation project supported by the Research Council of Norway.
VISUAL - a language for service design 