Next Stop: The World 🌎
Personal Growth
Through Experiences Abroad
After living in the US for 8 years, I couldn’t help but to reflect and appreciate my experiences abroad as an international student. From calling my mom to ask how much water I put in the rice cooker, to being able to live independently and enjoying coming out of my bubbles to challenge myself, I’ve grown a lot.
After visiting more new cultures and meeting people with profound international experiences, I felt the sparks of creativity through those international travelers’ diverse self-reflection and exploration on their personal growth. Inspired by them and my personal international experiences, I found the curiosity to see if there are any common themes to personal growth through experiences abroad. I wondered if the findings can be used as a creative advantage to help others without living abroad experiences to achieve more profound personal growth.
In this study, I collaborated with another international student researcher to explore the journey of others with profound experiences living between cultures, to learn about their stories and hopefully to derive learnings that can be transformed to inspire others.
Role: UX Researcher | Timeframe: 4 months | Independent Research Project
Research
We started by applying a Qualitative Research Design using standard open-ended interviews to better understand participants’ study away experiences and track their journey.
We interviewed 12 participants (18~24 years old) with unique cultural experiences that lasted from more than 3 months, a semester, 5 years and more.
During the interview, we asked participants questions like the reason why they moved to another culture, some of the challenges they encountered, how they coped it them, as well as some of the biggest takeaways from their experiences.
Countries where we were able to hear about unique cultural experiences: United States, New Zealand, Israel, Singapore, China (Hong kong), China (Mainland), France, Ecuador, Tanzania, Australia, Europe, South America
Check out detailed interview findings on:
Reasons to move to another culture
Challenges encountered
How to cope?
Biggest takeaway
Experiencing Discomfort
One commonality we found was that every participants reported experiencing discomfort when first encountering a new culture. However we noticed that participants’ attitude towards this discomfort lead to big difference in their general international experiences.
““I have language barriers””
““I really miss home cuisine””
Discomfort
““I’m not used to the new environment””
“Don’t know what to say to others”
According to the interview data, all participants started adapting to the new culture from experiencing discomforts of being different from the environment. Some of the most expressed discomfort were:
Standing out in the culture
Physical appearance
Being uncomfortable
Language barriers
Fears/uncertainty
Feeling like a tourist/awkwardness
Analysis
Scenarios and Attitudes
We discovered three attitudes in participants when facing discomforts in the new environment:
People would either feel (1) curious about learning the cultural discomfort, feel (2) neutral about facing discomfort, or (3) not curious, even reject learning about why they experienced discomfort.
Chart of Attitudes In Cultural Adaptation
After summarizing the three scenarios of attitudes, we generated this chart to further describe participants’ growth and experience when first encountering new cultures.
Findings
We found that people who embraced discomfort had the most self rated personal growth and the highest satisfaction rate for their experiences aboard.
We also generated three major features of people with the best experience and the most growth:
Openly discuss discomfort and constantly reflect to gain insights for future.
Willingness to experience and confront differences and mistakes
Take differences as learning opportunities for better growth as an individual as well as within a group
Conclusion
From our interviews, we discovered that the majority of our study participants have gradually fostered the mindset to try and create new ways to coexist with people who have different points of view, as well as connecting with new environments and situations.
As a result, people who were able to consider and embrace differences were able to value them as opportunities and advantages. This appreciation of diversity enabled them to truly connect with new cultures instead of trying to get rid of the discomfort that arises during interactions.
Continued Study
When we finished the study, we went into the lockdown and virtual learning due to the pandemic. This inspired us to expand our study and consider how might our findings still apply in the post-pandemic landscape.
Role: UX Researcher | Timeframe: 3 months | Independent Research Project