GCC Vaccination Booking Portal
An online portal for Chennai's citizens to book their COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
Project Summary
GCC Vaccination Booking Portal is an online portal to enable the citizens of Chennai to book their COVID-19 vaccine appointments. The portal was developed for the Greater Corporation of Chennai in collaboration with the Chennai Smart City Initiative. This was initiated as a response to the excessive crowding of people at the vaccination camps due to the lack of a proper appointment booking facility. The platform was received well by the public for its ease of use and it facilitated around 215,000 vaccination bookings. The success of the platform led to subsequent replication in other corporations in the Tamil Nadu state.
Role
I contributed as the UI/UX designer in a team of four comprising of a frontend developer, a backend developer, a project manager, and a UI/UX designer (myself).
Timeline
June 2021 - August 2021
Client
Greater Chennai Corporation, Government of Tamil Nadu
Tools
Challenge
During the second wave of COVID-19 in India, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) organised free vaccination drives in several public health care centers. The vaccinations were done on a walk-in basis in all the vaccination centers, which led to numerous challenges:
- Excessive crowding at the vaccination centers leading to further COVID-19 contamination.
- Poor footfall in certain centers due to lack of awareness.
- The walk-in queue system led to a major proportion of people not getting vaccinated despite standing in long queues since the vaccine availability in any given center was limited.
Process
User Research
The user research involved efforts to understand people’s approach towards availing government services and the existing practices around COVID-19 vaccination processes.
- Understanding different ways to avail government services.
- People's approach towards CoWin, the central government's vaccination portal.
- Different scenarios that arise at the vaccination center.
- Behind-the-scene processes in vaccination drives at the government level.
- Existing government digital services related to COVID-19.
Insights
The extensive user research led to crucial insights on two levels - system level and user level.
System Level
- There was already a state-run COVID-19 support call center and WhatsApp support system.
- Vaccine supply was limited because of the excessive demand.
- The vaccine supply was constantly changing because of the fluctuating production.
- Government officials knew of the supply details only one day before arrival.
User Level
- The process had to be mobile-first.
- 50% of the population was not comfortable with English.
- Vaccine administrators didn't have any device access in the vaccination centers.
- E-Service centers and small shops played a crucial role in bridging the digital divide.
User Personas
Arun Kumar•OccupationIT Support Engineer•Age29
Arun is a tech-savvy person who lives with his wife and parents. He has already taken the first dose of vaccination.
Sumathi•OccupationGrocer•Age57
Sumathi owns a basic mobile phone and knows only Tamil. Sumathi is yet to take her first vaccination dose.
Suresh•OccupationSmall Business Owner•Age45
Suresh owns a smartphone. He is more comfortable with Tamil than English.
Conceptualization
Owing to the short timeframe of the project, the conceptualization was done rapidly. Paper-based wireframes were used to get a consensus from the team on the user flow and information architecture of the platform. Then, a high-fidelity prototype was designed directly in Adobe XD. The prototype was used to secure approval from government officials before venturing into the development process.
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Solution
GCC Vaccine
GCC Vaccination Booking Portal is a one-stop online portal to enable the citizens of Chennai to book and manage their COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
Choose a vaccination center by zone
Citizens could select a convenient vaccination center based on the zones in Chennai.
View slots in the vaccination centers
The portal allowed the citizens to select convenient timeslots for their vaccination appointment. The timeslots and availability were designed so as to avoid crowding.
Book a slot
The citizens were allowed to book only one slot in a session to facilitate a fair availability of slots.
Manage Slots
The citizens were also allowed to cancel or reschedule their slots to account for last minute plan changes.
Usability Testing
The usability testing was done in several mechanisms through various stages of the design cycle:
- Lo-Fi Wireframes: As the platform was built on the go, the paper-based wireframes were used to gauge the feature requirements and receive feedback from the project manager to iterate on multiple ideas quickly.
- Pilot Testing: Before the official launch, the platform was tested in a few zones in an unmoderated way by letting the users book appointments for their vaccinations and several changes were implemented based on the learnings from this pilot.
Results
The platform was rolled out to facilitate COVID-19 vaccination bookings for the entire Chennai city. To bridge the digital divide, provisions were also made to enable people to book their vaccinations through e-service centers and COVID-19 Helpline numbers as well. Below are some of the results obtained through the platform.
215K
Vaccination Bookings
89%
Booking Completion
95%
Appointment Turnout
Media Mentions
The platform got extensive media mentions and was appreciated both by the public and government officials for its ease of use. Following are links to some of the mentions that the platform received:
The Hindu, The News Minute, The Indian Express, The Times of India
Our team also won the Open Innovation Challenge by the Tamil Nadu Start-up and Innovation Mission. The portal was proposed to be replicated in 5 more city corporations in the state of Tamil Nadu.