Claró - Online team

Meet Claró, the intelligent support system that helps immigrant parents take charge of digital life
Claró is easily accessible and implemented as a website extension
Onboard with Claró
Here’s Claró breaking down the highlighted information for immigrant parents in the language they’re most comfortable with.
This is Claró helping parents understand the documents.

Inspiration

Claró | (klah-roh) to brighten. to light up. to make clear. to explain. to make illustrious/famous.

We’re living in an age where AI, AR, and ambient computing promise to bridge worlds, but for many, especially immigrant families, the digital world often feels like a maze. School portals. Government forms. Medical emails. They’re not just hard to translate; they’re hard to understand. This year’s challenge asks us to design for the unknown and to make complex systems feel human. Immigrant parents are navigating not just language barriers but entire systems that were never built with them in mind.

This, however, is where our product, Claró, comes in. Claró is an AI-powered browser extension that transforms complexity into clarity. It helps immigrant families make sense of digital life, one page, form, or email at a time.

What It Does

Claró is a browser extension that helps immigrant parents understand and interact with digital content such as emails, school portals, medical forms, and government websites by simplifying and translating it into their native language using voice and visual aids. It turns a confusing screen into a clear, friendly conversation so immigrant families can feel informed, confident, and in control.

Key features include:

Human-Like Conversations in your language: Claró actively listens to the user's struggles with technology and questions with the click of a button. It then gives vocal feedback to the user by suggesting what they need to search on the web for, what buttons they need to press, and more. For extra support, Claró also reads web pages aloud, including emails, forms, and announcements, using clear, simplified language in the user's native tongue. It’s like having an easily accessible translator and technician sit beside you and gently guide you through technology to accomplish your goals..

Plain Language Overlays: Complex instructions become visual tooltips and plain summaries. Users just need to highlight information to receive explanations like: “Income details” → “This is where you write how much you earn.”

Context-Aware Support: Claró notices patterns and offers gentle guidance: “This looks like a school meeting request. Want to add it to your calendar?” “This message says you need to respond by April 25.”

By prioritizing personalization, transparency, and intuitiveness, Claró enhances the immigrant adult's experience navigating complex technology, ensuring they feel confident, informed and in control.

User Research and Synthesis

To better understand our problem scope, we conducted some web scraping on public forums to identify common pain points in immigrant-family-member's testimonials. One user on reddit.com states, "I was the first person in my family to learn English so I had to be a translator and cultural interpreter for my parents. Some of the more difficult parts included being 10-11 years old and being asked to translate financial and legal documents." With this in mind, we conducted a survey with 5 respondents that were immigrant parents or come from immigrant households, mostly in the age range of 55-64 (80%). These participants typically prefer to learn how to navigate complicated American systems with native language explanations (100%) and visual aids, step-by-step instructions, and repetition (60%). They also highlighted their biggest struggles, including filling out digital government forms (100%), their child's school emails and documents (80%). When confused, respondents said that they go to their child for help (100%), and 60% of them said that their child is "always" their translator.

KEY FINDINGS

Difficulty Understanding Official Documents: 100% of respondents said their parent struggles with government documents (e.g., taxes, benefits), while 60% said they struggle with school forms, job applications, and medical forms. _ Why it matters: _ These are time-sensitive and often legally important, yet filled with jargon and hard-to-translate terms.
Relying Heavily on Their Child for Translation & Tech Help: 100% of parents ask their child for help first when confused, and 60% of respondents say they’re constantly in the translator/tech support role. _ Why it matters: _ It places emotional and mental pressure on the child, and creates dependence that limits the parent’s autonomy. What happens once the child moves out?

How Claró Addresses These Needs:

Based on these findings, we focused on creating a product that prioritizes:

Voice Narration that explains unintelligible information verbally in the parent’s language, building trust and reducing overwhelm. Users just need to highlight information to automatically receive explanations, which will highly mitigate the process of filling out important forms and documents.
“Tap and Ask” Feature that allows parents to quickly get help understanding what's being said or written during digital interactions by speaking directly to Claró, eliminating the need for help from the user's child.
Contextual Suggestions like “This sounds like a doctor’s appointment—do you want to prepare some questions?” that make parents feel supported, not lost.

Accomplishments that We're Proud Of

We are proud of three main components of our product pitch:

1. It’s Rooted in Real Human Needs: Claró was built because people asked for it—immigrant parents who are trying to navigate forms, conversations, and systems that weren’t made with them in mind. It doesn’t solve a hypothetical problem, it solves a daily one.

2. It Restores Dignity and Independence: Many immigrant parents feel disempowered when they have to rely on their children for basic communication and tech help. Claró flips that dynamic. It lets parents lead again, fill out the form, understand the message, and speak for themselves.

3. It Turns Cold Systems Into Human Experiences: Government portals, tax forms, school emails often feel like walls, not bridges. Claró's strength is not just translation; it’s interpretation with empathy. It reimagines technology as a kind guide, not a gatekeeper.

Claró is something we are proud of because it doesn’t just make things easier. It makes underserved people feel seen, respected, and capable.

What's next for Claró

As Claró grows, the next evolution is a mobile and wearable companion that empowers parents in real-world, high-stakes situations such as doctor visits, school meetings, or government offices where confusion and miscommunication are most likely to happen. The mobile app would offer the same core features as the browser extension, including voice narration, simplified text, and contextual prompts, but adapted for on-the-go use with a streamlined, tap-to-ask interface. Integrated with wireless earbuds, Claró can quietly translate and explain conversations in real time, offering parents discreet support without interrupting the flow of communication. By moving with the user, Claró can become a portable guide through everyday systems.