How do you make a decade of information worth exploring?
11 Years of Seva was a mobile-first module within the Civic App, launched in June 2025 around the 11-year milestone of the government. It brought together stories, timelines, quizzes, activities and feedback into a single interactive experience.
My role was to shape the UI/UX and interaction design across the module, from the structure of the user journey to the interface and interaction details. I worked as part of a cross-functional team of 3 designers, 1 product manager, 2 project managers, 38+ developers and 12+ LCAP analysts/developers.
Role
UI/UX & Product Designer
Product
11 Years of Seva Civic App
Project type
Time-bound Civic Engagement Module
Primary focus
Mobile-first Experience + Interactive Journey
Timeline
May 06 - June 12
Team
3 Designers · 1 PM · 2 Project Managers · 38+ Developers · 12+ LCAP Analysts/Developers
Key areas
Interactive Storytelling
Quizzes
Activities
Timeline
Progress
Rewards
Feedback
Navigation
Overview
An information-heavy experience on a mobile screen
The module had to bring several content formats together without turning them into disconnected screens. Stories, milestones, quizzes, activities and feedback each had different interaction patterns, but they still needed to feel like parts of the same experience.
The first version started with a straightforward activity structure. As the product evolved, the experience moved toward a more defined journey with an activity map, progression, unlocks and clearer ways to move between different parts of the module.
The assignment was more than presenting information
The product already had the content. The design challenge was deciding how people would move through it.
That meant thinking about where someone could enter, how much they could explore, what happened after an interaction, and how progress connected one activity to another.
That distinction shaped the experience
I focused on turning the collection of content and activities into a journey with clear entry points, visible progress and repeatable interaction patterns.
The central design question became:
How do you make a large, time-bound body of information easy to enter, explore and participate in?
WHAT CHANGED
From a static activity flow to a structured journey
The first version was deliberately simple. It established the basic navigation, activity entry points and a simplified A1-A5 progression so we could validate the structure before investing in the full experience.
As we tested the early flow, it became clear that the activities needed a stronger relationship with one another. The second sprint changed the model rather than simply adding more content.
The activity sequence became a dynamic journey, with levels, themes, progress and unlocks giving users a clearer sense of where they were and what came next.
Sprint 01
Establish the foundation
The first sprint focused on answering a basic question:
Can users understand the activity structure and move through it?
The low-fidelity direction included:
Basic navigation
Activity preview
Static activity card grid
A1 → A5 progression
Simple activity entry points
This gave us a skeletal model to validate before moving into the richer experience.
What it gave us
The structure was workable, but the relationship between activities was still weak.
The user could see what existed, but the experience did not yet communicate why one activity led to another.
WHAT CHANGED
We stopped treating the activities as separate destinations.
Instead of expanding the original A1-A5 structure, Sprint 2 introduced a more expressive model:
Activity → Level → Theme → Progress → Unlock
Each level was connected to a real-world development theme, while progress and unlock states gave completion a consequence.
This was a structural change, not simply a visual redesign.
Sprint 02
Turn the flow into a journey
The second sprint introduced:
A dynamic activity map
The journey became a visual trail rather than a static sequence.
Thematic levels
Activities were grouped around themes such as Swachh Bharat and Ayushman Bharat, giving the journey more context.
Progress indicators
Users could see their movement through the experience.
Unlock mechanisms
Completing one level created a relationship with what became available next.
The result was a product that could support both quick entry and deeper exploration, which later became an important part of the interaction model. The live case study explicitly describes short, medium and deep engagement loops, including entering through a quiz or continuing into badges and Vikas Central.
The shift
THE PRODUCT PROBLEM
The challenge was making a large experience work in a small amount of time
11 Years of Seva brought together storytelling, quizzes, timelines, activities, rewards and feedback inside a time-bound mobile experience. The challenge was not finding enough content to show. It was deciding how much users should see, how they should enter it, and what should happen when they chose to participate.
The research and affinity mapping surfaced a few recurring tensions:
Users wanted something quick
The experience was primarily mobile, and the research pointed toward short, low-effort interactions. Longer, multi-step tasks and heavy onboarding introduced friction.
But the product had much more to offer
A quiz could be completed quickly, but the module also contained deeper activities, progress, badges, profiles and Vikas Central. The experience needed to allow users to go deeper without making that depth mandatory.
And participation needed a reason to continue
The research identified interest in visible rewards, recognition and personalization. That gave us useful mechanisms, but it also created a prioritisation problem: which mechanics actually strengthened the experience, and which simply added more complexity?
01. Breadth vs. attention
There was a lot to communicate, but users would not necessarily arrive with the time or intent to explore everything.
The experience needed to work in a short session first, while leaving room for deeper exploration.
02. Freedom vs. orientation
A completely linear journey would force everyone through the same experience.
A completely open experience would make it harder to understand where activities belonged.
Users needed freedom to enter at different points without losing the structure of the product.
03. Engagement vs. complexity
Quizzes, badges, streaks, leaderboards, profiles and personalization could all make the experience more interactive.
But every additional mechanic introduced another state, rule or decision.
The goal was not to add more engagement mechanics. It was to identify which ones earned their place.
The constraint
This was a time-bound product, not an open-ended platform
The module had a fixed campaign window, a large cross-functional delivery team and a broad mobile audience. That put a practical limit on how much complexity the experience could carry.
I therefore had to make decisions around value versus effort, using the effort-impact framework to prioritise the core experience and defer ideas that were not essential to the first release.
The design problem
How do you turn a large, time-bound body of information into a mobile experience that users can enter quickly, explore at their own pace, and understand as they progress?
That led to four design requirements:
01. Make the first interaction easy to understand
Users should be able to start without first learning how the entire module works.
02. Support different depths of exploration
A short quiz, a few activities, or a deeper exploration should all feel like valid ways to use the product.
03. Make participation feel consequential
Completion should produce a visible response, whether through progress, rewards, badges or unlocking the next activity.
04. Keep complexity behind the experience
The product could have a sophisticated underlying system without asking users to understand that system before they could participate.
MY ROLE
I worked on how the experience was structured and experienced
I worked as a UI/UX & Product Designer within the wider team responsible for delivering the module.
My contribution focused on the experience layer: how users moved through the product, how activities were structured, and how interaction and progress were represented.
What I owned
Experience structure
Interaction model
Activity progression
Navigation
Interface & prototypingon
Who I worked with
Product Managers
Design Team
Project Managers
Engineering & LCAP
What I couldn't decide alone
Campaign & content direction
Product priorities
Technical feasibility
Delivery scope
I owned how the experience came together. The product direction, campaign requirements and delivery constraints were shared with the wider team. My responsibility was to turn that space into a coherent journey that could actually be designed, built and shipped.
DESIGN WORK
The product had to turn information into something users could move through
The experience started as a collection of content and activities. Through the design iterations, it became a system of journeys, progression, rewards and repeatable interactions.
I focused on five areas that changed how the product worked.
01. From activity list to activity map
The first version showed activities. The second gave them a reason to connect.
02. Design for the two-minute visit
The experience had to work even when users did not have time for the whole journey.
03. Build the Quiz → Reward → Quest loop
A completed interaction needed to lead somewhere.
04. Make progress something users could see
Progress was not just a number. It became part of the experience.
KEY DECISIONS
The hardest decisions were about what to leave out
There were more ideas than the timeline could support. Activity maps, quizzes, avatars, themes, rewards, leaderboards and other mechanics could all make the experience richer, but adding everything would have made the product harder to understand and harder to build.
I used three questions to make those decisions:
Does it improve the journey?
Does it work in a short mobile session?
Is the value worth the implementation effort?
That led to a few decisions that shaped the final experience.
Give the journey a structure
DECISION
Move from the initial activity sequence to a level-based activity map.
WHAT CHANGED
Sprint 1 established a simple activity structure. As we learned from the early experience, it became clear that the activities needed stronger relationships between them. Sprint 2 introduced thematic levels, progression and unlocks.
The richer model introduced more states and interactions to design and build, but gave the experience a clearer sense of progression.
RESULT
Activities became parts of a journey rather than a list of things to complete.
Design for the short visit
DECISION
Make individual interactions useful without requiring users to complete the full journey.
WHY
The research pointed toward short, low-effort interactions, while the product itself contained enough material for much deeper exploration.
DESIGN IMPLICATION
A user could enter through a quiz or activity, complete something meaningful, and leave without feeling forced through the rest of the experience.
RESULT
The product could support short, medium and deeper paths within the same structure.
Make every mechanic earn its place
DECISION
Use gamification only where it strengthened the user's next action.
WHY
The project had many possible mechanics: badges, streaks, rewards, leaderboards, personalisation and more. Adding them all would have increased complexity without necessarily improving the core experience.
FILTER
Does it help the user participate, understand progress, or continue?
If it did not have a clear job, it could wait.
RESULT
Quizzes, rewards, badges and progress were tied to specific moments in the journey rather than becoming a collection of standalone features.
Keep the navigation stable
DECISION
Keep the five primary product areas consistently accessible.
CONSTRAINT
The experience had multiple entry points and different depths of exploration. Navigation that changed with each activity would make the product harder to orient within.
TRADE-OFF
Persistent navigation uses valuable mobile screen space and leaves less room for activity-specific controls.
RESULT
The global structure stayed consistent while the activity map could handle deeper progression independently.
Build patterns, not one-off screens
DECISION
Create reusable patterns for activities, quizzes and rewards.
WHY
The campaign was time-bound, but the interaction patterns did not need to be. Designing every activity independently would make future changes expensive and inconsistent.
TRADE-OFF
Reusable patterns require more definition upfront and place constraints on how individual activities can behave.
RESULT
The product had a modular foundation that could accommodate new content without reinventing the interaction model each time.
Before adding another feature, I asked what it changed for the user. If it did not make participation clearer, progress more meaningful, or the journey easier to navigate, it did not need to be part of the core experience.
REFLECTION
I came in thinking about engagement. I left thinking about structure.
The obvious problem seemed to be how to make eleven years of information more interactive.
But the work showed me that interaction was only one part of the problem. The harder part was deciding how each interaction should relate to the next one.
The shift from the first activity structure to the level-based journey made that clear. The product became easier to reason about once activities had a place, progress had meaning, and users could choose how deeply they wanted to go.
1.
Structure comes before mechanics
A badge, streak or reward can make an interaction more noticeable. It cannot fix a journey that does not make sense.
I now start by asking where an interaction belongs before asking how to make it engaging.
2.
Short sessions are not incomplete sessions
Designing for mobile meant accepting that users might only give the product a few minutes. The answer was not to squeeze the entire experience into that window, but to make a short interaction feel complete while leaving a clear path to explore further.
3.
Every feature needs a job
The project had plenty of ideas that could make the experience richer. The effort-impact work helped separate what strengthened the core journey from what could wait.
That became a useful filter for me:
If a feature does not improve the journey, clarify progress, or give the user a meaningful next step, why is it there?
4.
Small interactions carry product meaning
The project made me pay closer attention to what happens immediately after an action. A completion state, reward, badge or progress update is small on its own, but it tells the user whether their action mattered and what they can do next.
Prototyping and internal validation reinforced this. The team used those iterations to refine progression, navigation and micro-interactions rather than treating the first UI as the final answer.
What I would do differently
The project also left a few things unresolved.
The streak system was not immediately obvious to every first-time user, and the leaderboard had limited data early on, which affected how useful that surface felt. The information-heavy Vikas Central also had opportunities for better navigation.
Given more time, I would focus on:
Making progression easier to understand on first use.
Giving information-heavy areas stronger internal navigation.
Validating the reward and leaderboard mechanics with more sustained usage data.
These are not additions for the sake of more features. They are areas where the existing system could become clearer and more useful.
