Join us for our April meetup, where we'll discuss inclusive UX design, in particular for refugee and immigrant populations. People at all levels of experience are welcome!

Jenna Altherr Flores, UA doctoral candidate in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, will present "User experience and L2 adult emergent readers: research-based recommendations for designing print and multimodal materials." This session will detail the results of research concerning how L2 adult emergent readers from refugee backgrounds and non-Western cultures make meaning and understand multimodal texts. As L2 adult emergent readers, this population is becoming literate while simultaneously learning a second language; thus their emerging literacy is manifesting in the language that they are learning. Most L2 adult emergent readers come from refugee or immigrant backgrounds, and have had limited or interrupted schooling. As they are resettled in highly-literate countries where print and multimodal literacy is necessary for integration, education, access to services, and other pragmatic reasons, it is important for service providers and materials designers to know how this population understands multimodal texts. The research focuses on still image, writing, and layout in assessment materials in learning environments, but the implications are far-reaching. The presentation will also cover ideologies and assumptions of print and visual literacy as seen in both classroom assessment materials, and the semiotic landscape of institutions that serve refugee-background adults.

About UX@UA

Want to meet and collaborate with fellow user experience professionals at the University of Arizona? Students, faculty, and staff at the UA interested in UX of all sorts and all levels are welcome. We'll talk user research, UX/UI design, content strategy, information architecture, journey mapping, persona building, and more.

We also have a Slack team - anyone with a UA email address come join our conversation.

If you're not at UA but want to connect with us, feel free to join our meetups and just ask Rebecca to get invited to Slack. All are welcome!