Take a step back and observe: How human-centric design is shaping the development of Kenyan e-services

The three services selected were birth registration at the Civil Registry, loan applications for the Uwezo Fund, and information and applications for Nairobi County vocational training programmes. 

A new way of thinking about e-services in Kenya

Trinidad Wiseman team members travelled to Kenya last August for five-day sprints for each service. There, they collaborated with service providers and end users to better understand how users engage with the services and the challenges they encounter when registering or filling out applications.

“When talking about human-centric design, our take is that humans live everywhere. It’s always observations and interviews first to understand the topic and understand the users. We actually go and talk to people and listen to what they have to say,” said Helen Susan Selirand, Strategic Design lead at Trinidad Wiseman.

According to Triin Kangur, ESTDEV’s IT project manager, one of the main benefits of this project was that participants could see human-centric design in action. “In Kenya, they have concentrated not on a final user but on the organisation providing the service. During this project, it was the first time public service designers went to the end customer to see how they used the service,” she said. 

In a multilingual, multiethnic country like Kenya, this type of design can be used to address users’ unique challenges. “Applying human-centric design principles places the user at the heart of the design, which is crucial in a diverse country like Kenya. This approach promotes inclusivity and accessibility by considering factors like literacy levels, digital access, and cultural differences,” said Kenya’s Secretary of the Civil Registration Services Mr. Paul Mwangemi.

Meeting the real needs of real people

Implementing e-services in Kenya will increase government efficiency and improve citizens’ access to services. Efficiency isn’t always just minutes saved; in some cases, it even means kilometres saved as it decreases the distance users must travel to submit applications. Individuals will no longer need to ferry a piece of paper from point A to point B; they can simply take a photo of their document and upload it to the system.

As Dr Annie Njau, head of Loans and Credit at the Uwezo Fund, pointed out, “Digitalisation will enhance the ease of access to the Fund by reducing the physical movement required to submit a loan application, which comes in handy for rural groups and groups of people with disabilities whose mobility is greatly challenged. Plus, there is increased transparency for group members by ensuring that application can be done at a convenient place, like where the group meets.”

The accessibility of government services (or lack thereof) can have lifelong implications for Kenyan citizens. When speaking with representatives from various hospitals and the Civil Registry, the Trinidad Wiseman team learned that only about 80% of births are registered in Kenya. Children without a birth certificate face significant roadblocks to accessing services, leaving these vulnerable members of society with limited options for future success.

The prototype designed for birth registration addresses these pain points by decreasing the possibility of human error, freeing up time for other tasks for both officials and parents and ensuring that children can easily access their documents in the future without relying on safeguarding a paper copy throughout their childhood.

“It gives us joy to minimise bureaucracy and then see a rise in efficiency and opportunities to spend that time somewhere else… for 1.5 million births, you reduce even a couple of days from each of these processes for a single person, the impact is huge,” said Helen Susan Selirand, Strategic Design lead at Trinidad Wiseman.

Though the birth registration e-service is only in the early stages of the digitalisation process, Mr. Mwangemi said the effects will be substantial once it is eventually implemented. “The turnaround time from the point of birth notification to registration and certification will decrease from the current 1-2 months to three days or as little as two hours. We anticipate it will help increase overall birth registration coverage rates and improve the quality and timeliness of vital statistics,” he said.

A blueprint for sustainable digital development and future collaboration

During the final stage of the project, prototypes were designed for the three e-services to allow users to see what the final product might eventually look like. Selirand said presenting a prototype was important, as  “[The Kenyan service providers] already have a big pile of analysis documents. They don't want another pile of paperwork… I think that's something that this procurement is doing better; it doesn't stay as just the pieces of paper we created.”

In addition to the e-service prototypes, a handbook for developing citizen-centred digital services was created. Government entities across Kenya can use this handbook to plan and design e-services that will serve the needs of local residents.

“[Trinidad Wiseman] created the guidebook using the human-centric design theory. They describe the approach, including all the steps. They mapped out everything they did. [The Kenyan government] can take this guidebook and introduce it to their service providers and service owners,” Kangur said.

Selirand said it makes sense for Estonian businesses and development cooperation to continue working in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. Estonia depends on global connections but also has much to offer its partners. “We don't live on separate planets,” she said. “[Estonia] requires a lot from the rest of the world. And they also require some things that we have, our skills and knowledge, expertise and experiences. These are valuable.”

This e-services design project took place under the framework of a 2.4 million euro digital development project in Kenya to support the country’s digitalisation and the creation of a transparent, efficient digital society. ESTDEV manages the project as part of the Team Europe Initiative (TEI) on Human-Centred Digitalisation. GIZ supports implementation through the Digital Transformation Center (DTC), and Germany and the European Union have provided financing.