In this practice based research, through literature review research, I learned about the common problems that international students face in their host communities and some of the factors that caused them to lack a sense of belonging to the host community.
In order to help international students in Melbourne to better connect with their host community and to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the two, I interviewed some international students who have lived in Melbourne for different lengths of time through ethnographic interviews and gained important insights in the first phase. Afterward, I used sense making methods such as experience mapping to organize information from the interviews. This allowed me to find commonalities among them. That also led me to propose a sub-question in the form of "How might we" to narrow down and specify the main topic/question - "How might we maximise the opportunities of international students in university context?" I used it as a starting point to find relevant precedents and develop a potential solution through a nearly completely resolved application design.