UX Case Study: Redefining Enterprise UX for the Government of UAE 🇦🇪
BACKGROUND
The CPC acts as a bridge between the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the citizens, handling requests ranging from financial aid to marriage assistance. Traditionally reliant on manual processing, these interactions suffered from delays and inefficiency, prompting the need for a digital transformation.
OBJECTIVE
Although CPC had a suite of desktop applications, majority of tasks were still performed manually through hand-written notes and printouts. Previous efforts with global consulting agencies to digitize these processes had been unsuccessful. Our objective for the minimum viable product (MVP) included several key goals:
- Understand user resistance to digital tools
- Streamline one department’s workflow as a pilot project
- Minimize manual processing
- Reduce carbon footprint
MY ROLE
I initially joined the project as the only contributor, building upon preliminary research and workflows developed by previous agencies. My role was to run the entire design cycle, from initial discovery through to final delivery.
After successfully delivering the MVP and gaining the client’s confidence, we expanded the team to include a UI designer and a UX designer. This allowed me to redistribute my responsibilities into:
- 20% on managing the design team
- 30% on client relations
- 50% on hands-on design work
DESIGN PROCESS
Research
In-depth user and stakeholder interviews, shadowing, and analysis of previous activity logs helped us understand the existing challenges.
Definition
We crafted clear problem statements and developed user personas, which guided our design decisions.
Ideation
Focused brainstorming sessions led to innovative features like unified application processing interfaces and predictive analytics for request prioritization.
Design Implementation
We created a responsive UI that consolidated multiple applications into a single interface, drastically cutting down processing times.
Testing and Feedback
Continuous onsite feedback loops and user training sessions ensured the system was intuitive and met all user needs.
⚠️️️️️ Disclaimer: In this case study, I have excluded any confidential details. The information provided represents my personal observations and interpretations, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the individuals at the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi. Ensuring the privacy and security of their processes and customer data remains my top priority.
1. RESEARCH
1.1 Key user pain points
- Duplicate applications requiring extensive time to sort.
- Essential documents are often unavailable during processing.
- Frequent phone calls to citizens to gather missing information.
- Managers fail to distribute work evenly among employees.
- Slow systems, with frequent non-responsiveness during peak hours.
1.2 Key business pain points
- Excessive number of applications accumulated, slowing overall processing
- Lack of mechanisms to prioritize urgent applications, such as those for medical treatment.
- High maintenance costs resulting from multiple software systems used across departments..
- Employees frequently fail to adhere to SLAs.
- Absence of effective tools to evaluate and monitor team performance.
1.3 My observations
- Cultural considerations: Locals value being seen as the ultimate authority; systems that seem to control or overly monitor them, especially with performance tracking that may negatively highlight them, are likely to be resisted.
- Navigation and page load is a pain. Users struggle with inefficient system design, needing to switch between 8 different applications and navigate through 26 pages, with each page loading in approximately 2 minutes.
- Waiting for missing documents: A significant amount of time is wasted on communication with citizens to gather missing documents, leading to delays ranging from 15 to 45 days from initial request to document acquisition.
1.4 Processing timeline based on the current process
- 9 days to register an application
- 80 days to assign the application
- 140 days to process the application
- 40 days to take a decision
- 30 days to close the application
- 31,000 applications in backlog (since 2016)
2. DEFINITION
2.1 Problem statements
I am an officer in the finance department
I am trying to process a financial aid request
But I need to put the application on hold
Because I do not have the required information and the system is too slow
This makes me feel frustrated and limits my working capability.
I am the manager of the finance department
I am trying assign and monitor all financial aid requests
But I am unable to do so
Because I do not have a way to priotize the requests
Which makes me feel helpless.
2.2 UX guidelines
Based on our research, we developed the following guidelines that we referred to every time we designed a solution:
- Simplify the workflow.
- Create a consistent experience across applications.
- Ensure system status visibility.
- Avoid rigid processes; allow users some flexibility.
- Design for faster performance.
- Offer users the ability to set their preferences.
- Prioritize UX over UI design.
2.3 User personas
2.4 Setting the success metrics
- Reduce the time taken to respond to a citizen.
- Reduce the time taken to close a request.
- Reduce carbon footprint.
- Reduce the time spent on calls with citizens.
- Reduce the manager’s workload.
- Increase the availability of data in the system.
- Increase the number of applications processed per day.
- Improve the morale of employees and managers.
- Increase the adoption and retention rate of the new system.
- Increase the citizen happiness index.
3. IDEATION
3.1 Key ideas to improve employee productivity
- Classify applications as Normal or Urgent during the initial registration to streamline processing.
- Implement predictive analytics to assess the likelihood of application approval or rejection.
- Integrate a chat messenger for better coordination across departments.
- Consolidate 8 desktop application APIs into a single screen to reduce toggling between applications.
- Display key information and status of pending items on a central dashboard to facilitate quick decision-making.
3.2 Key ideas to improve manager productivity
- Automatically assign requests to employees based on the type of request and employee capabilities.
- Utilize dashboards to monitor team and request performance continuously.
- Introduce gamified leaderboards and reward systems to incentivize managers based on team performance.
3.3 Key ideas to improve data availability
- Enable citizens to manage their requests and documents through a self-service portal, reducing dependency on staff.
- Establish a special department focused on handling and completing pending requests.
- Strengthen security and streamline user verification using Emirates ID-based authentication.
- Foster data sharing partnerships with other government entities to enhance information accuracy and availability.
- Implement image-to-text processing software to automatically convert scanned documents into editable and searchable text.
4. DESIGN
5. TESTING & TRAINING
One of the key benefits of working onsite with enterprise applications is the proximity to users, which facilitates immediate feedback — this is a marked advantage over B2C application scenarios. Here are some highlights from this phase:
- Daily Feedback Sessions: We allocated 30 minutes each day to gather feedback from a different individual in each department, allowing us to make continuous improvements to the design.
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Following the staging deployment, we conducted a full day of UAT and usability testing with two representatives from each department to ensure the system met their needs.
- Training Sessions: After deploying the production version, we dedicated the following day to training users on the new features and workflows, ensuring a smooth transition.
- Continuity Plans: To prevent disruptions, we maintained the old system alongside the new one during the initial rollout phase to address any missed requirements or bugs in the new system.
- App Ambassadors: We appointed knowledgeable employees as ‘app ambassadors’ in each department. These individuals were fully versed in the system’s functionality and served as the primary resource for their colleagues’ queries regarding the new application.
5.1 Evaluating the success metrics
- ✅ Reduced the time taken to respond to a citizen by 45%.
- ✅ Reduced the time taken to close a request by 60%.
- ✅ Reduced carbon footprint by 75%.
- ✅ Reduced time spent on calls with citizens (qualitative analysis).
- ✅ Reduced the manager’s workload by automating his entire workflow.
- ✅ Increased the availability of data in the system by 94%.
- ✅ Increase the number of applications processed per day. All new applications were processed the same day. Additionally, there was a reduction in the backlog by 8% per week.
- ❓ Increase morale of employees and managers: Users were happy. But, we did not get time to get quantifiable data to support this.
- ✅ Increased the adoption and retention rate of the new system. 87% of users were using only the new system.
- ✅ Increased quantitative visibility of team’s performance by supporting dashboard and other metrics.
- ❓ Increase citizen happiness index: We did not get time to get quantifiable data to support this.
My fantastic team of designers on this project 🖖
Dipesh Savani, Varun Velhankar, and Prince Malhotra
About the author
Atishay is a seasoned product designer known for his strategic approach to design and implementation. His work focuses on aligning user needs with business objectives to create impactful digital solutions.
