Aarogya Setu Redesign

Service redesign of Covid-19 app (2022)

OVERVIEW

Summary

Aarogya Setu is a Government of India initiative that was planned and developed in a public-private collaboration by the National Informatics Centre team. The app is designed to complement the efforts of Department of Health in proactively reaching out to and alerting app users about risks, best practises, relevant advisories, and vaccine related information related to COVID-19 containment. Through this case study, we tried to find gaps in the user experience. We have also tried to give our solution for these gaps.

CONTEXT

Motive

While travelling from Bengaluru to Mumbai, we came across the mandatory requirements for flying. "All passengers must install Aarogya Setu app" it read. The app was meant to be used by everyone actively but it wasn't the case. Many just installed the app when it was mandatory to access services and never used it again. This case study is our effort into understanding the root causes of this problem and trying to find solutions for them

PROCESS

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Timeline

We plotted the timeline of events around Aarogya Setu app.

Ecosystem

To understand the relations between stakeholders, we created an ecosystem map.

User Reviews

We wanted to understand the general perceptions and challenges in using app. We looked into the google reviews of the app. Then we clustered similar reviews together.

Expert Reviews

Aarogya Setu has been under constant criticism with respect to user privacy and security. The app uses user's GPS and bluetooth data to trace contact and alert about possible covid-19 exposure. We read a lot of expert opinions about the app. Most of whom gave a negative feedback and pointed out flaws in the tracing method. From user reviews, we were able to confirm the inefficiency in contact tracing.

Due to all these reason, we made a collective decision to drop the contact-tracing feature of the app.

Competitor analysis

We found few applications that were similar to Aarogya Setu for other countries. We could only access limited features as international numbers were required to sign in. We looked into youtube videos explaining the functions of the apps. All of the apps were almost similar to Aarogya Setu.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Survey

We created a short survey and got few responses to help us validate user reviews.

Interview

After the survey, we interviewed 10 people for 20 minutes regarding Aarogya Setu. Most of the insights we found were same as the ones on playstore reviews. Key findings:

1. Few participants said they would rather use CoWIN website.
2. There are concerns about data privacy and distrust for developers.
3. App is used only when its mandatory.
4. Few participants preferred keeping physical vaccination certificate handy.
5. Keeping GPS and bluetooth would drain battery faster.
6. Participants had safe status even with wide spread infection happening nearby.
7. Anyone can easily fake in the assessment to keep "SAFE" status.

DEFINING

Personas & Journey map

We created 3 different personas with different personality archetypes and created empathy maps for them. We imagined few scenarios and plotted a journey map for these personas.

HMW questions

Once we were done with the primary research, we narrowed down the problem statement to 3 HMW questions:

1. How might we improve app navigation?
Aarogya Setu App is India's official Covid19 tracing app. Thus was downloaded on a large scale. Many of its user are very new to the digital world and might find it difficult to navigate and find features on their own. We would investigate if a better navigation is possible.

2. How might we increase app engagement?
The accuracy of the app depends upon the number of people using it. But through our research we observed that it was mostly used only when the app was mandatory to be installed. We would try to ideate new methods of app engagement.

3. How might we redesign data visualisation?
The app shows Covid-19 data statewise. The visualisation of this is poor and needs improvement to create better understanding of the data. We would work on improving these visuals.

DESIGN

Service Blueprint

We did a short ideation session and came up with lot of ideas. We tried implementing those through new service blueprints.

Information Architecture

We broke down current IA into cards then added the cards with noval features that we came up with in ideation phase. Then clustered them into groups to create a new IA.

Mockup

We created Lofi wireframes, iterated few times then finalised the mockups.

Solutions

Following are the solutions proposed by my team:

REFLECTIONS

This was my first collaborative design project, and having visual designers on the team introduced new perspectives that enriched the overall creative process. I also developed key skills in conflict resolution, learning how to mediate differing ideas within the group to ensure alignment and maintain project momentum. The collaborative environment pushed me to think more holistically about design, not just from a functional perspective but also in terms of visual aesthetics and user experience.

As we move forward, the next steps include creating an interactive prototype that we can test with real users, performing multiple iterations based on feedback. Additionally, we plan to research alternative methods for contact tracing to ensure the solution is adaptable and effective across various scenarios. This process will allow us to refine the design while keeping both user needs and technological constraints in mind.