For people who are not so tech-savvy.
The main goal:
If people don’t make a reservation online, they have to stay in line for a long time just to get a ticket then stay again for filling and depositing the application forms.
So, our goal is to let people know that they can avoid all the queues and provide them an easy to use solution to do this.
How is it now:
The problem here is that you have to be patient (being patient it’s a virtue generally) and look very carefully through the 11px font-size to find a link called “… appointments online here” you click on that then you go to another page where you will find out that in order to make an appointment you have to write an email and then wait for the confirmation.
Alright!!!
Also, I forgot to say that what you see on this page looks like this, to translate it perfectly:
As much as you want to find information about how to get a passport it makes it almost impossible to find out this info, to not speak about the final goal, to encourage people to make an online reservation.
The structure of information is extremely chaotic. On the first page there is no information about making an online reservation saying that you can avoid all the queues, physically.
Technically speaking, it’s not responsive. Considering that the majority of people own a smartphone/tablet and have internet access I think that it’s pretty obvious why it needs to be responsive.
The audience
We have two types of users:
1.Let’s say “Kelly” who is a housewife, she lives in Bucharest (Romania). She is 50, divorced with two children. Because she is very close to the retirement pension she thinks to travel abroad to work as a housekeeper.
What assumptions can we make from this user persona?
By having children it’s pretty safe to assume that they have at least a smartphone or a tablet.
The financial situation doesn’t seem to be a very good one considering that she wants to travel abroad to work as a housekeeper, so the phone/tablet capabilities are not very “high-end”.
Most likely the browser on their phone/tablet it’s a pre-installed one with some technical limitations. What this user does on the internet it’s like a ping-pong game between Facebook and Google.
As a conclusion, she it’s not a tech-savvy person, she is barely tech-friendly. This means the interface should not be cool, it should be clean. Everything cool will be a serious roadblock.
What is more familiar than text, colors and basic shapes for organizing the information.
2. Let’s say “Mike” who is a web developer from Timisoara (Romania). He is 23 and works for a respectable IT company earning 1000$ monthly. He is very talented and he recently got an offer to work abroad.
This is the exact opposite compared to with first user persona. Technical limits, technological understanding and the familiarity with everything regarding the Internet are much more advanced.
Regarding how this type of person is spending time online it’s also different. He spends time on Facebook or other similar social media platforms, obviously Google and other websites.
So, it’s much easier for him. The first thing he will think about it’s how he can make an appointment online. We can be sure about this, he is a programmer 🙂
This data I’ve gathered from observing how this users personas are using the internet. Luckily this was pretty easy because I am surrounded somehow by these kind of users. Of course, there are more user personas to analyze but it’s not for our goal. The other people who are looking for passports they can not really afford to do this because they either have a very low financial status, they are living in the countryside and so on… So, these are the main two user personas we should focus on.
Let’s start with the home page.
I’m creating a user flow just to break in pieces all the sections and the pages to know what’s important and what’s not so important.
This allows me to have a clear view of how I should arrange the information and how the user should “walk”.
Not so much details, just to have a general view.
And this is the flow for for the reservation page:
Again, here is just the main structure, all the details will be explained later in this article. The whole process here it’s based on a step by step approach. I’ve managed to give the people everything they need to know without having go through the website to see what they need to do.
Basically, this step by step reservations takes you through everything you have to know or to do in order to get your passport.
Older people love the step by step approach, programmers also 🙂
Ok, let’s go back to the home page for a bit.
Here’s the improved home-page:
Suddenly doesn’t seem to be so scary, right?
Well, it isn’t. Now the information has a structure and a nice flow. It’s much easier to look around and find the information you need as quickly as possible because nobody enters on a governmental website to see what’s new, have some fun and so on…
Let’s move to the reservation system.
Here is a short example of how easy it is to make a reservation and pay the necessary taxes for getting the passport:
So, everything you need to know and to do for getting the right passport it’s implemented in this reservation process. Even if you don’t know what kind of passport you need or what legal documents you need going through the process of making a reservation will let you know everything you need to know.
Leave a Reply