February 2025: A Vision Taking Shape
When we started Zen Citizen, our goal was to help at least 50-100 people; a small way of contributing to society. But as the idea gained momentum through dedicated volunteers, encouraging messages, and even a proactive grant from Dr. Malpani, we feel inspired to aim higher. Beyond writing guides, building tools, and answering service-related questions, we are now thinking about scale and long-term impact.
Advocating for Better Government Website UX
We’re working with a government team to push for better user experience on their websites. The need for improvement is clear – a senior bureaucrat even remarked, “This site is so unintuitive, I might have to hire a middleman to navigate it!” Although many government employees understand the value of good UX, their focus on quickly deploying minimum viable products often means UX is treated as a luxury. The prevailing attitude tends to be, “Let the user also do some work and figure it out.” Our goal is to help them make a stronger case for UX improvements. We’re very excited about this collaboration!
Open-Source Website Framework
Another major step in this direction is our plan to launch a more intuitive, scalable, open-source website by the end of April. It will include a robust content management system to support well-structured guides, and a framework adaptable for other states in India and even other countries. This vision took shape thanks to Priti, our volunteer from London, who stepped up to lead our website efforts. We expect the re-hauled website to be ready by the end April ‘25.
This is a significant effort, but we’re taking this route because, while we focus on quick hacks and ‘band-aids’ to make government websites more accessible (since addressing core issues is beyond our influence and meaningful change takes time), we want our own platform to have a strong foundation for the future.
A Data-Driven Approach to Selecting Services for Guides
We filed an RTI to obtain data on Sakala-related delays, grievances, rejected applications, and the actual text of rejection responses. This will help us identify which services need detailed guides and pinpoint key pain points that require workarounds.
Expanding Website Content
This month, we expanded our website content with the following additions:
- Scaled Kaveri Village Finder to cover all of Karnataka – Thanks, Abhik & Nishit!
- Marriage Registration Guide – Thanks, Rakesh Kumar!
- Lokayukta Police Complaint Guide – Thanks, Siuoux!
- RTI Template for Service Delays – Special thanks to Vignesh from The Hindu for his insights and Srinivasan Ramani, Deputy Editor, for facilitating!
Global Support for our UX Efforts
Our second highlight is the success of our UX outreach! Priti, based in London, has generously offered to lead our website efforts. Nathan, based in the US, is helping us redesign our content guides to make them more visually engaging. Meanwhile, Cassie from Singapore is helping us present version 2 of Civic Compass. Thank you for joining us, Nathan, Cassie & Priti!
Onward & Upward!