2024

B2C • Web Application

Gemeente Amsterdam Veilig

Designing a safer, more humane way to connect citizens with government benefits

Duration

3 weeks

Team Size

My Role

Product Designer (UX strategy, research, interaction design, system logic, prototyping)

Client

Gemeente Amsterdam (Government of Amsterdam)

Agency Coach

Code d’Azur

Overview

This project was undertaken as part of my Master’s in Digital Design, in collaboration with Gemeente Amsterdam.

The brief was not to redesign a single interface, but to rethink how government benefits are distributed. Today, citizens must actively apply for resources, while eligibility is assessed through rule-based algorithms that often lack transparency, context, and empathy.

We asked a fundamental question:

How might government systems match resources with citizen needs in a way that is humane, transparent, and trustworthy, without increasing risk or complexity?

The Challenge

In the existing system:

Citizens must request benefits they are already entitled to
Algorithms flag potential fraud without explanation
Decision-making lacks human context
Data usage is opaque, reducing trust
Services are fragmented across multiple portals

Design challenge beyond UI:
Translating complex technical systems—algorithms, data permissions, blockchain contracts—into interfaces that everyday citizens can understand and trust.

Research Insights – Where Trust Breaks

From citizen interviews, we identified consistent patterns:

Users didn’t know where to start
They feared making mistakes
They didn’t understand decisions
They felt powerless in the system

Critical insight:

The system optimizes for control and fraud detection, not for clarity and trust.

This shifted our design goal from efficiency to decision safety and transparency.

Strategic Reframing

We made two foundational design decisions:

1. One unified, citizen-first portal
Organized around life situations (e.g. safety, housing, income support), not departments.

2. Explainable and auditable decisions
Eligibility logic, data usage, and access rights are visible to citizens.

This aligned citizen needs with institutional responsibility.

Designing Trust into the System, Beyond UI

We explored blockchain conceptually as an infrastructure layer to support:

Verifiable eligibility logic
Traceable data access
Immutable decision records
Clear accountability

Blockchain was not presented as a feature, but as a trust mechanism operating behind the interface.

Designing Under Ambiguity

Constraints included:

Evolving policy rules
Limited access to real government data
Legal and accessibility requirements
Short academic timeline

Design approach:

Clarify assumptions early
Design for uncertainty
Prioritize ethical responsibility over speed
Focus on decision quality over completeness

Failure Prevention & Trade-offs

In GovTech, success is often measured by what does not go wrong.
This design actively reduces the risk of:

Wrong benefit applications
Blind trust in opaque algorithms
Untracked data access
Premature over-automation

Key trade-off:
More transparency adds cognitive load, but reduces systemic risk and long-term distrust.

Simple System Flow

Citizen starts with a life situation (e.g. safety, housing, income support)
System requests only essential data
Eligibility rules are evaluated via smart contracts
Each decision step is logged on the blockchain
Citizen can see:

What data was used
Why a decision was made
Who accessed their data

6. Outcomes are either:

Approved
Requires clarification
Escalated to a human caseworker

Caption: Automation balanced with human oversight to reduce risk and preserve accountability.

Design Solution

Rebuilding Trust, Transparency, and Usability in a Public Digital Services Platform

The solution reframed the platform from a transactional government portal into a trust-first digital service ecosystem, designed to reduce cognitive load, clarify complex processes, and give citizens explicit control over their data. The experience was intentionally structured around three critical moments in the user journey: pre-engagement (landing), first-time use (Day 0), and repeat usage (Day N), supported by a transparent, end-to-end agreement flow.

Landing Page (Pre-Sign-up Experience)

Strategic Intent: Trust, Clarity, Expectation Setting

A trust-first landing experience that sets expectations upfront, explaining how the platform works, how it improves legacy systems, and how user data is protected, reinforced by social proof.

Dashboard – Day 0 (First-Time User Experience)

Strategic Intent: Reduce Uncertainty Before Action

A first-time dashboard that builds confidence by surfacing eligibility signals, data usage principles, and service readiness before users take action.

Dashboard – Day N (Returning User Experience)

Strategic Intent: Operational Clarity & Ongoing Trust

A personalized dashboard giving real-time visibility into application status, benefits, and data sharing, reinforcing trust through continuous transparency.

Create Digital Agreement – End-to-End Flow

Strategic Intent: Simplify Bureaucracy into a Predictable Digital Process

A guided, end-to-end agreement flow that converts complex government procedures into a clear, step-by-step digital journey, covering eligibility, data consent, review, and secure submission.

Create Agreement 1

Create Agreement 2

Create Agreement 5

Create Agreement 1

1/5

Outcome & Validation

We stopped at concept and hi-fi prototype stage. To validate:

Tested with the same citizens from initial interviews
Presented at the MDD Feedback Feast, receiving input from visitors, faculty, and peers.
Measured whether the new flows solved real problems