Beginning in 2020, Ashleigh co-led the Coforma team in upgrading the design and features of the Immigration Policy Tracking Project's database and website, allowing policymakers to efficiently find, analyze, and more easily reverse the anti-immigration policies.

The Problem: Obscured Anti-Immigration Policy and Complex Data Management

During his presidency, Trump transformed immigration through numerous covert presidential actions. Many were enacted via Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations that restricted entry for certain individuals—initially from primarily Muslim countries and later from predominantly African nations. These actions were inconsistent with the principles of religious freedom and tolerance embedded in the foundation and Constitution of the United States. Before these actions could be reversed, they needed to be carefully uncovered, documented, and shared to empower the media, the public, and subsequent policymakers committed to constitutional values.

The Immigration Policy Tracking Project (IPTP) was launched in 2017 by Lucas Guttentag, alongside teams of students at Yale and Stanford Law Schools. Together, they developed and maintain a comprehensive record of Trump administration immigration actions to facilitate a deeper understanding of the scope and impact of these policies and to aid in creating a roadmap for reform.

“No one was systematically tracking everything that the Trump administration was announcing and doing.”
— Lucas Guttentag, IPTP founder (Yale Daily News)
“There have been over 1,000 changes related to immigration policy under the Trump administration, and many of them are ones that there’s little to no news coverage of.”
— Diana Li, IPTP research coordinator (Yale Daily News)
 

The Team and Goal: Immigration Policy Transparency & Accessibility

As Trump’s presidency neared its end, Lucas Guttentag identified the need to enhance the initial tool’s design and functionality to ensure its effectiveness for future policymakers. The original design, suitable for early scholarly documentation, required updates to accommodate a broader range of users, improve the user experience, and document the eventual reversal of policies more effectively.

Coforma, co-owned by Ashleigh Axios, collaborated closely with Guttentag and his team to redesign IPTP. We centered the project around its vision, real users, and practical use cases, and iteratively researched, designed, built, and released updates.

“Having this information in an easily accessible format for advocates would be able to tangibly help so many.”
— Gaby Vasquez, IPTP research assistant (Yale Daily News)

The Approach

Under Ashleigh’s guidance, Coforma worked alongside the Immigration Policy Tracking Project (IPTP) to build a user-friendly website and database at ImmPolicyTracking.org. This platform was tailored to help pro-immigration policymakers swiftly access and analyze anti-immigration policies from the Trump administration while developing advocacy strategies.

Coforma employed a human-centered design approach and agile development techniques to enhance product effectiveness and visual appeal for IPTP. Our initial deliverable was a comprehensive report synthesizing user needs, creating journey maps, validating problem statements, outlining use cases, evaluating the technical landscape, and defining the tool's voice and visual style. This groundwork informed the co-development of the site's taxonomy and navigation, ultimately enhancing functionality for Guttentag, his team, and external stakeholders, including the press and policymakers.

The homepage of the Immigration Policy Tracking Project website. (2024)

A couple of public-facing pages of the Immigration Policy Tracking Project website. (2024)

 
 
“Coforma brought insight, creativity, and amazing expertise. From the initial assessment and conceptualization to the delivery of a final product, the Coforma team understood our goals, worked collaboratively, presented new and better approaches, and produced a remarkable website that has transformed our project. Throughout the entire process, I felt we had a true partner that shared our vision and helped us achieve it.”
— Lucas Guttentag, IPTP Founder
 
 

Thorough and Synthesized Research

We conducted comprehensive discovery work focused on IPTP’s vision, real users, and use cases. This effort culminated in a report summarizing our findings and providing a strong foundation for ongoing content refinement, design, and development.

 

Document Management and Integrated Feedback

We acknowledged that every policy is rooted in official documents—executive orders, departmental memos, court cases, and more—that are essential for understanding their history and implementation. To enhance access to these resources, we integrated a PDF viewer into each policy page and included a feedback tool, allowing external users to offer relevant suggestions and updates.

 

Voice, Tone, and design

We established a consistent voice and visual identity for IPTP, ensuring cohesion across the site and creating a natural experience for users, as the design was co-created with them. These design choices elevated the site’s professionalism, enhancing users' confidence in the platform.

 

Data management and CMS

We developed an integrated content management system (CMS) that empowered Guttentag and his team. By streamlining internal processes to accommodate rotating student researchers, we provided reusable onboarding materials, enabling the IPTP team to publish updates as needed. This flexibility ensures the site remains current and manageable, while the CMS is tailored for law students, lawyers, and subject matter experts who continuously add new information.

 

Search and tagging in plain language

We implemented a search function and an intuitive tagging system based on taxonomies developed through interviews with stakeholders and users. This allows users to find relevant policies quickly by searching familiar keywords, enhancing overall usability.

 

Timelines and News

We created a centralized page where users can view recent policy actions and read about related current events. Additionally, we developed a timeline feature that displays each action taken on a given policy in chronological order, enabling users to track its evolution from enactment to the most recent update. These features provide a comprehensive overview of immigration policy developments, helping users identify key issues to address.

 
 
“Coforma produced for us all we could want in a CMS. They took the trouble to understand our site, and the needs of both our front-end and back-end users.

Both the design and the development teams were pleasures to work with.”
— Crystal Williams, IPTP Project Team Member
 
 

Initial Results

Media

“By the end of Trump’s Presidency, Guttentag’s Trackers had logged a thousand and fifty-eight changes to the immigration system. Early in the process, he gave me access to the Tracker, and I began to report on the human toll of the lesser-known policies, enlisting a team of postgraduate fellows from the Global Migration Project at Columbia’s Journalism School. In the past few years, we have spoken to two hundred people who bore the brunt of these changes, and found more than sixty cases of irreparable harm that resulted, including torture, sexual assault, and death.”
— Sarah Stillman, New Yorker (2021)
 

Administration Decisions

“After months of waiting, the Biden administration has hired a former Obama official to help take apart the restrictive immigration policies developed under former President Donald Trump, according to three people familiar with the hiring.

Lucas Guttentag will serve as senior counselor on immigration policy and report to the Department of Justice’s Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. ”
— Anita Kumar, Politico (2021)
 
 

Awards Highlight

 

COMPANY
Coforma

CLIENT
Immigration Policy Tracking Project

INITIAL LAUNCH
July 31, 2020

TEAM
COFORMA

  • Ashleigh Axios: Executive Sponsor and CXO

  • Jared Cunha: Front-End Engineer

  • Sabrina Fonseca: Research Lead and UX Designer

  • James Hobbs: UX and Visual Designer

  • Angela Hopkins: Content Strategist

  • Derek Kinsman: Software Engineer

  • Yoni Knoll: Technical Lead & CMS Developer

  • Eduardo Ortiz: Executive Sponsor and Product Manager

  • Lokesh Rajbhandari: Project Manager