How can we match the simplicity of a piece of paper when moving through our digitisation journey?

The possibilities of a piece of paper are massively underrated. And that poses a huge challenge for businesses starting on a digitisation journey. We were approached to assist with an ongoing project to digitise a complex paper form process that was hitting some challenges as the required details became clear. Fundamentally, the challenge boiled down to the fact that people filling out paper forms could grab another sheet of paper, mark it up to show it was an addendum to a particular section of the form, and then continue to provide the necessary information.

It sounded like the sort of challenge that digitisation could really help with, so we were surprised that the team needed help to unblock. As long as the form fields were unlimited in terms of their characters, there would be no problem in writing as much in response as required. Two additional factors soon became apparent though, which enforced a change in approach:

• 1. The form was the first step in an extensive application validation process involving multiple manual checks, subjective analysis and time-specific outcomes for responses that could span a 60-70 year time-frame. And the rest of the process was out of scope for the work at hand.
• 2. It was regularly necessary for users to provide multiple responses to the same question, to represent different times in their life that certain events had occurred, which immediately shut down the ‘just unrestrict the character limit’ assumption that everyone had first jumped to.

In this challenge, our investigative engineering approach was bolstered by some very talented User Experience colleagues. Collaboratively we landed on a technologically-complex but user-friendly nesting approach that allowed users to duplicate sections on demand, without breaking the form's validation rules. Our involvement in this instance started with a Proof of Concept and quickly transitioned into an Alpha which we were able to release production-ready code to get real user feedback.

Matching the versatility of a piece of paper is never easy, especially when the simplicity of paper is what your users are used to. But with some clever engineering and adhering to powerful UX processes, we were able to give the users a great experience while delivering the significant business benefits that come along with digitisation.

Why the Business loved it

• Streamlined Operations, reducing end-to-end processing times.
• Contributed positively to overall modernisation agenda, particularly with regards to org mindset.
• Tech complexity facilitated user simplicity, for a great experience all round!

Why the Engineers loved it

• Solving real-world problems through technology is exciting and rewarding
• Working with Graph databases introduced new learning and ways of thinking
• The client's commitment to using tech for good is inspiring