Citizenship had 6 main problem statements which helped tp frame design decisions:
1. I don’t know whether I’m eligible or where to start.
2. Let me apply how I want to
3. I have to provide the same information multiple times
4. I can’t pay how I want to
5. I have to call again to do anything
6. Ceremonies are inflexible
1. I don’t know whether I’m eligible or where to start.
2. Let me apply how I want to
3. I have to provide the same information multiple times
4. I can’t pay how I want to
5. I have to call again to do anything
6. Ceremonies are inflexible
Putting the citizenship application online with supporting tools and information solved the majority of these problems for at least 80% of applicants.
Designing the online pilot
When I joined the programme, I was lucky enough to be able to work with an established service design team, who had been researching the citizenship process for a couple of years. So my first task was to break down the existing paper application and its rules to see what was and was not necessary in an online version. This breakdown and the extensive research by the service designers informed the design of the pilot.
Pilot flows
There was no eligibility tool available for customers to figure out if they were eligible to apply. The only tool was an excel spreadsheet used by case officers to determine if customers meet the presence requirement. If a customer would like their eligibility calculated they had to email the relevant citizenship team along with a printed, completed, signed and scanned AMS consent form. This process took 2—5 days before the customer knew the result.
It was necessary that an eligibility tool became part of the toolset to support the citizenship application. With much consultation with citizenship experts, I designed the flow of questions needed for the tool.
Outcomes
After many rounds of prototype testing with potential citizenship applicants using tools such as Optimal Workshop and UXPin, the pilot was developed and launched.
There had to be some temporary workarounds for the citizenship case officers to receive the applications, as no integrated processing was available yet. I designed a very simple "Staff application viewer" tool, from where assigned staff were able to retrieve the application to process.
The applicants invited to use the pilot did so successfully and I used the design of the pilot to build out what is now in production.