Welcome to Sweden : Can visual language facilitate entry into Swedish society for preliterate?

Abstract: During the fall of 2015, Sweden had the biggest incoming refugee wave since 19921, where more than 80 0002 people searched refuge in Sweden, unfortunately it will not be the last. Using 2015 as a case study, I explore the question: Can visual language facilitate entry into Swedish society for preliterate? Preliterate tends to be set aside in many situations like in 2015. There have been several debates and claims on improving the happenings of 2015, but how come that no one has taken preliterate into consideration? How can we in modern society adjust to this quite huge new group of people? How can we make the entry in to society more ef cient, and how can we provide important information for preliterate – is visual language the answer? To answer these questions, I have collaborated with Merit utbildning Malmö AB (Merit AB), a company that through various assignments like SFI (Swedish for immigrants) and Stöd och matchning (Vocational support, skills and employment matching services), helps newly arrived to nd their place in Swedish society. They allowed me to conduct several workshops with their students, this to ensure that the end result would be by the target group and for the target group. The workshops were primarily based on metadesign methods like 5 levels of storytelling and Designing miracles. After conducting several workshops with both research groups (focus group and reference group), the experience taught me to trust in the process and take a step back as a designer, and let the participants, design the result. The process concluded in an app called Welcome to Sweden, whose content is re ected at Malmö Central Station. While designing the app, the methods to reach out to preliterate were taken in to account. The information is provided in visual language as well as audio, and translated into the most common languages of those who came to Sweden 2015. The app is not the whole solution to the problematics, but my studies show that it would work better for many more in the target group and, in particular, information provided in this way would be more appropriate for the target group preliterate.