All Works

Vaccine Ops

Open Government Products, GovTech

An inclusive appointment booking and certificate system for Covid-19 vaccination in Singapore.

My Role

Product Designer

My Contribution

User Research, Service Design, Prototyping, User Testing, User Interface Design, Visual Design, Frontend Development

About the team

2 Product Managers, 5 engineers and 2 designers

Year

2020

Platform

Web

Time frame

3 months

cover

Project Overview

In order for Singapore to recover gradually from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is important that 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19.

Our team was tasked to digitise the vaccination operation. People are skeptical of the newly developed vaccines, we should design a good vaccination experience so that the public is confident of the overall vaccination programme.

How might we get as many people as possible to come forward to vaccinate without overwhelming the healthcare system?

The Team

I was 1 of the 2 designers. There were 2 Product Managers, 5 engineers and 2 designers at the early development stage. We only had a month of development to make sure everything was ready for the first wave of registration by the healthcare workers and the opening up of vaccination centres a month after. There was a lot of coordination between the PMs and the policy/ ground operation teams.

User Flows

The intent of the user flows is to encourage as many people to indicate interest as possible so that the government have a good sense of demand amidst the uncertainty & limit of vaccine supply as well as people's willingness to be vaccinated.

The first target audience are the seniors (and the healthcare workers) as they are the most vulnerable to Covid-19. In any digital roll-out, we will usually target the more tech-savvy users but not in this case. This also means that we must have, right from the start, an inclusive, non-digital altenative onboarding experience so that we can get as many seniors vaccinated as possible.

The designed solution must also take into account -

  • Full vaccination requires 2 doses that are X number of days apart and different vaccine brands need different number of days between 1st and 2nd dose.
  • The changing policies, health advisory that must be made aware to the users and how conditions affect the flows (e.g. Pregnant women were advised not to be vaccinated initially.)
  • Roll-out is also incremental depending on vaccine availbility and its challenges around storage/ distribution etc.

Generic base user flow

Digitally Non savvy/ Elderly Flow

Vaccination Day Flow

My Contribution

I worked on various parts of the journey shown above, overseeing the overall user experience and user interface design. For the early part of the journey, I worked on the Vaccine.gov.sg landing page and the registration flow. I worked with my co-designer, Christabel Png, on the health checklist questionaire and appointment booking portions. I also focused on booking experience of the elderly and "proxy" (volunteers and staff who help elderly/non-digital savvy to book). I also prototyped the vaccination certificate even though it was not used eventually. I omitted the flow at the clinics administering the vaccines as that was not part of my contribution.

Appointment Booking and edge cases

I was working with my co-designer on the appointment booking flow. There was some core concepts that needs to be achieved with this flow.

  • A login page for user to enter a unique booking code and personal identifier for verification purpose
  • A health questionaire that will be updated periodically depending on the ground's observation on people's reaction to the vaccines (e.g. certain health issues are not suitable for certain vaccines). It screens the individual suitability for the vaccine based on health conditions.
  • Able to select a clinic near to you, we also want to direct people to choose vaccination centres over polyclinics due to higher capacity at vaccination centres
  • Select 2 dates that are 21 days to 28 days apart (depending on vaccine brand). Appointment booking is not complete if either slots is not booked.
  • Users expect a way to cancel or reschedule appointments, but we want discourage against these actions via the UI as slots are really limited/ not available.
  • There are also edge cases where they might walk in to the clinic for their first dose and needs to book the 2nd dose via the appointment system.
Appointment booking screens
Appointment booking screens

Proxy Booking

Proxy Booking occurs when volunteers and public officers book appointments on behalf of seniors. We wanted to keep the main flow as primarily digital and yet have an inclusive flow for seniors was to activate community and ground support that will go around to explain and help the seniors. Hence, we designed a flow where these volunteers is able to book and manage appointments the seniors they help.

Appointment booking screens
Appointment booking screens

User Testing

Here are some glimpse to out user testing on the ground with the public and clinics who will be using our systems

User Testing for Appointment Booking
User Testing for Appointment Booking

Appointment Cards

These are printables (in 4 major national languages) that the volunteers will carry with them so that they can fill up the booking details and hand it over to the senior who does not have a mobile phone after making an appointment on their behalf.

Appointment Cards in 4 languages - filled by the volunteer during house visits
Appointment Cards in 4 languages - filled by the volunteer during house visits

Vaccination Certs

I also conceptualise how vaccine certs and verification can work in conjuction with time-limited Antigen Rapid Test clearance certificates.

There were too many unknowns that needed work from the policy and operation again before I could design effectively. e.g. Who will verify and how will they verify? Will they need an app? How much data should be revealed?? Will it be discriminating if one is unvaccinated and yet denied access?

Hence, after some policies and strategy changes, it was handed off to the team who were implementing the entrance checking systems at public places to work on it. A year after I designed these screens, the vaccination status feature has been integrated into the TraceTogether App which is the app used for checking in into places you visit. My mocks only served as initial conceptualisation for planning and discussion.

Vaccination Certificates and Covid Test Concept with time based expiry
Vaccination Certificates and Covid Test Concept with time based expiry

Landing Page

I did the content planning, design and frontend of the vaccine.gov.sg website over a few days using the Government Website builder - Isomer. Most of it was organising the content using the CMS, find appropriate illustrations, write the content in Markdown and create a custom accordion for the FAQ questions since that was not available as a feature.

The website's main objective is to direct people to register for vaccination and have their most commonly asked questions answered. I also trained the ops and comms colleagues so that they can update the website on their own using the Isomer Content Management System (CMS).

I created the structure, prepared the content and images and coded vaccine.gov.sg
I created the structure, prepared the content and images and coded vaccine.gov.sg

Impact

92%

Total Population Vaccinated

I am surprised, my own dad upon seeing the press release went to register and made an appointment without my help. The product is well-designed and thoughtful. Even the most elderly groups of users had an easy time making their appointments.

Commander, Crisis Strategy and Operations Group, Ministry of Health

Reflections

I am very honoured and humbled to be able to play my part and help out in a minor way in the whole covid-19 vaccination operations. It was one of the most hectic and chaotic projects I have been involved in.

prevRefunds Dialog
nextPay.gov.sg