Swwachhata-MOHUA - App Redesign
Many times, we come across situations where we see people dumping garbage in open space say on vacant plots or even worst they burn it. When an argument doesn't seem to work anymore, we can stop this by complaining to the local Municipal corporation of the city by logging in to this app called "Swwachhata-MoHUA".
It's an official app of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs(MoHUA), GOI and built by "IChangeMyCity" which is a division of Janaagraha, a Bengaluru based non-profit organization. A citizen can post civic-related issues on this app which is then forwarded to the city corporation concerned and thereafter assigned to the sanitary inspector of that particular ward.
Challenge
Redesign its mobile application using the User-Centered Design approach with the recent UX practices and with proper UI Design eliminating the strain of using all the services offered by the app and to ease the ticket booking experience of Common man.
Old Screens
Client
Personal Project
My Role in the process
My part was to conduct researches and surveys, User Journey Maps and flows, Analysing scenarios, Ideation, Wireframing, Prototyping and creating High Fidelity Visual Designs.
Why I chose this app?
This app has around 10M+ downloads and has done good business since its launch. Still, if you do a survey and review the app, people are complaining in bulk about the app.
Also, being a frequent traveler, I could easily empathize with other travelers' expereience using the app and could easily hunt for the flaws present in the design. After doing some research and gathering pain points of the users, I found that users are actually frustrated with its experience as it has severe flaws and a huge area for improvement.
Competitive Analysis
There are a few apps having similar facilities of raising complaints about several categories say Banks, Transportation, Telecom, and regarding various government departments.
As per my findings, below are a few important features that need to be included in the app -
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Contact and customer care details for respective departments.
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The essential services available should be kept upfront.
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A generic option to raise requests for other categories that are not listed in the app.
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App walkthrough or user guide needs to be provided for new users.
User Research
I started by conducting interviews with people having prior complaining experience either by the app or by directly contacting municipal corporations or ward members.
Most of them were reaching out to the municipal corporation office directly for complaints like water logging in the area, garbage disposal issues, and many more.
A couple of them had contacted Municipal corporations through the customer care numbers available either with them or taken from someone else and a few had raised complaints through the app before.
Besides this, the reviews and ratings of the app played a vital role in finding out the defects and flaws of the app. Below are some handpicked reviews by its users both critical and admiring.
Demographics
Key Audience of this app would include people aged between -
16-25 who are probably raising complaints on behalf of their parents/neighbors/relatives, etc. or organizing events and volunteering in welfare events.
25-50 who are either contacting directly for urgent issues such as stray dogs or blockages, etc. or using this app to raise concerns on the same and a part of the events as well.
50+ generally are not much used to using such applications and mostly prefer direct visits to the Municipal corporation or contacting them.
Prerequisite knowledge/experience
Users should have a smartphone and a basic knowledge of using smartphones or computers.
User goals
Users are using this app for several purposes such as losing complaints, organizing events, or volunteering in them, locating public toilets, giving suggestions, and raising grievances.
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Complaint lodging users
Users using the app to lodge complaints about any civic related concerns. They remain certain about the category to be chosen for their respective complaint.
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Event Organizers
People using the app to organize welfare events and gather volunteers and other crowds for these events.
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Event Volunteers
People willing to attain events organized for say animal or environmental welfare and others can easily volunteer for such events using this app.
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Non Users
There are people who are still fine with the manual lodging process as they are either not aware of this app or find it difficult to use such apps even though they are having basic knowledge or hands-on with smartphones.
Findings
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Many categories are missing in the dropdown.
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No option to upload multiple media and videos.
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App language can only be chosen once, no option to change it.
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Users do not have insight into any of the upcoming events neither in their locality nor in the city.
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Users are not aware of the Public toilet locator option.
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No option to get suggestions by the users on their surroundings or in general once.
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No user guide provided for new users.
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No option to save complaints raised by other users. Generally, a couple of people rely on an individual complaint raised by any of their colony members.
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Users are struggling to find the Help option.
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No option to change the theme of the app as per the accessibility perspective.
Motivation
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Don't need to visit the Municipal corporation office for complaining.
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Can easily check the status of any complaint.
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Gets point of contact details for confirmation purposes.
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Can get along with the other volunteers for various events.
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Easy Public toilet locator without any third party app or surfing.
Personas and Scenarios
Based on the interviews conducted and the above reviews, I've prepared the below Personas covering different demographics.
Meet Poornima
Poornima has just used this app twice to lodge complaints regarding Garbage vehicle related issues. Last month she went to Srinagar for a vacation with her family and anyway they had to take the roadway to explore nearby places. She has two kids and it was challenging for them to find Public toilets on their way. She had only used this app to lodge complaints so was not aware that there is some option to find nearby Public toilets as well. She eventually ended up letting the kids do it in open space.
Meet Rakesh
Rakesh is a social worker and works with some animal welfare club. That club had recently organized an event for Pet adoption and Rakesh took the responsibility of gathering people for this event.
Rakesh was using this app for a long time for lodging complaints, this time he used it to create an event and gather crowd for it. He shared the same with his friends and relatives. But he wasn't getting the expected response on his event on this app. Only those with whom Rakesh shared the event details showed up. He was very unsure as to why people not participating in this event even though this app is popular and there are so many pet lovers around.
Empathy Mapping
Based on the interviews conducted and its findings, I clubbed Empathy maps of a couple of users and presented them below.
Information Architecture
I mapped the application according to the services offered prioritizing the essential uses of the app. I also included the Train running status and Chart Vacancy screens which would help the users to easily check for the vacancy in any coach and tracking the live status of trains eliminating the need of downloading third-party apps for this.
User Flow
Redesign its mobile application using User-Centered Design approach with the recent UX practices and with proper UI Design eliminating the strain of using all the services offered by the app and to ease the ticket booking experience of Common man.
Ideation
Based on the user's pain points gathered, I've done a few ideations for the new features and rearranging the existing features in a way easily accessible the vast target audience.
Wireframes
After a few iterations, I finalized screens from various iteration that should cover most of the pain points and missing features without much disturbing the flow of the app as revamping the flow might create further confusion for the users who are already used to this flow since a long time.
Prototype
I created a Mockup of the app to conduct user testing so that any confusion or difficulty with the handling or features can be caught at this stage and can be corrected before proceeding to the Visual Designs.
User Testing
I conducted user testing on the above mockup prototype. Most of the users had prior ticket booking experience either with the app, agents or through the counter so they could easily empathize with this new design.
Affinity Mapping
I have organized my findings of user testing in this affinity map according to the design success, issues found in the new design and possible solutions that can be proposed for every page having issues either with the experience or features.
High Fidelity Visual Designs and Style Guide
All the findings and pain-points gathered so far are covered in the below redesigned Visual screens along with the newly added features.
Behind the scenes
Designers might assume that some actions are pretty obvious like filling payment
Take away
Designers might assume that some actions are pretty obvious like filling payment details on some page using your card, net banking, wallet, etc. but being a part of this digitized era where we are performing most of the actions digitally, it is difficult to imagine the world from a perspective where people find it really painful to differentiate between clickable and non-clickable areas. So it is essential to get into users' shoes before starting off with any design with our own assumption.
I understood the significance of adding minute details which creates a huge difference in the usability of the app.
A Design is never-ending nor its iterations, we can only find a point with the best usability and deploy the product.
