How can the discovery of key features in DigiLocker be Improved?

India is a country with 1.3 billion people and every person uses some sort of documents or certificates (e.g. Driving license, PAN card, etc..) in their daily life. Currently, the whole process of managing, storing, and verifying documents is offline.

We carry documents if needed to present documents at any time. It’s risky since you could misplace them. It isn’t just an inconvenience, your personal information can be at risk if they fall into the wrong hands.

There are lots of apps to manage your documents but they may not always be government approved. DigiLocker is operated by the Government of India and it lets you store a range of documents such as your school and college mark sheets, passports, ID proofs, and many more in the digital form. This means, your documents travel with you on your smartphone.

Why DigiLocker?

We have three entities for which DigiLocker could be beneficial.

1. Document Issuing authorities
2. Document Requesting authorities
3. End-user

Throughout the article by “Issuers” I’m referring to the authorities/Institutions which are responsible for issuing a document/certificate to the citizen of India. Likewise “Requestor” refers to the authorities/institutions who are requesting these documents/certificates for their need.

For the first two (Issuing/Requesting Authorities) followings are the benefits:

1. Reduced Administrative Overhead: Aimed at the concept of paperless governance. It reduces the administrative overhead by minimizing the use of paper and curtailing the verification process.
2. Digital Transformation: Provides trusted issued documents. Issued Documents available via DigiLocker are fetched in real-time directly from the issuing agency.
3. Secure Document Gateway: Acts as a secure document exchange platform like payment gateway between the trusted issuer and trusted Requester/Verifier with the consent of the citizen.
4. Real-Time Verification: Provides a verification module enabling government agencies to verify data directly from issuers after obtaining user consent.

Benefits for Citizens

1. Important Documents Anytime, Anywhere!
2. Authentic Documents, Legally at Par with Originals.
3. Digital Document Exchange with the consent of the citizen.
4. Faster service Delivery- Government Benefits, Employment, Financial Inclusion, Education, Health.

For the purpose of this research, we’re only focusing on the end-user and how can we improve the app for them

All the stats and data are as per the digilocker.gov.in/statistics

DigiLocker Growth

It was first launched in 2016 and since then it has managed to get 100.05 Million registered users, 1768 Issuers, and 358 Requestors.

the growth of DigiLocker has been slower than expected, it has seen a sudden increase in users during the Covid-19 pandemic and then the growth slowed down which indicates that the app is lacking to retain users.

A huge amount of DigiLocker’s growth is dependent upon the number of Issuers and Requestors (supply & demand) from the statistics we can see that there are not many Requestors who have automated the document submission using DigiLocker.

The government needs to take proactive measures to get more and more Issurer and Requestors onboarded.

All the stats and data are as per the digilocker.gov.in/statistics

Understanding the users of DigiLocker

The main target users of DigiLocker are the youth because they are the one who is open to adopting new technology and they are the ones who have to show their documents in physical form while talking admission in college/Institute and then again when they start seeking a job or while changing their jobs that is a common trend in the corporate sectors documents in the physical form while taking admission in college/Institute and then again
when they start seeking jobs or while changing their jobs that
is a common trend in the corporate sector.

Upon doing some research I found out how does the youth currently use the DigiLocker application.

Following are some stats from the 2019 survey conducted by IJRTE.

The survey had 721 students belonging to three broad categories namely, Undergraduate students, Engineering Students, and undergraduate professional courses.

78% of the respondents maintained their Driving License, their class 12th, and class 10th mark sheets in their DigiLocker Account.

82% of the Final Year undergraduate respondents replied positively that the use of DigiLocker will ease out their process of applying to various organizations at the time of their placements.

62% of the first-year undergraduate college-going and engineering college students who took up the questionnaire said that they did not have any knowledge about the DigiLocker scheme.

Security — 69% of the respondents felt that maintaining their documents on DigiLocker is not secure.

Amongst the respondents, 75% positively felt that DigiLocker is easy and convenient to use,

User Interview

I also conducted 6 user interviews to better understand the problem and pain points of the users.

Conclusion:

1. Due to many long lists in the app users often get confused/lost and couldn’t find what they are looking for
2. Users complained about the documents in DigiLocker does not feel authentic and no way to verify if the documents in it are authentic
3. The user still have trouble understanding the use of the app they say they can simply keep the picture of documents on the phone why use DigiLocker
4. Not all documents are available in DigiLocker.

Play Store App Reviews

I used Google Play Store to go through the user reviews and get to know about their concerns with the app.

Key Insights from user reviews on Play Store

1. New users have trouble creating accounts and signing in.
2. App feels slow and has a long loading time
3. The error message is way too vague for the users leaving them frustrated.

Problem Statement

1. How can the discovery of the key feature (of linking and fetching government documents) be improved
2. How can the power of these features be reinforced?
3. What needs to be improved so that the users are confident that these are government-issued documents?
4. What are the other ways by which trust can be gained?

Design Solution

After doing research and some brainstorming on solutions for the above-mentioned problem I’ve come up with a few of these solutions which in turn will make for a better user experience for the DigiLocker mobile app.

Conclusion

DigiLocker is a powerful tool to move into a digital era. This shift is happening where people are more and more depended uplon technology like mobile phone for their daily life.

Making the app more easily understanable for a new users would definitely gain more users, We also need to spread awareness about the DigiLocker.

A lot of people know about it but still doesn’t use it because most of the important features are missing or hidden away. Users think it might not be secure for which we need to educate them.

Thank you for reading.

Please do share your thoughts or feedback in the comments section.

Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.