Fast and slow — Experience Design for the public offices

Any one who has been to a government or a public sector office in India, would have formed certain impressions about it. Government offices anyways, across the world, are not known for ‘speed’. Combined with this, there are more issues that come with an emerging economy. Then there are private sector offices, the very centroid of capitalism. Imagine this discussion is happening when technology juggernaut is rolling on across several spheres of life and pushing things towards speed and efficiency. I had some startling realisation recently about a missing dimension in crafting customer experience.

I happened to go at a branch of State Bank of India recently for transfer of an account to another branch. The branch was in the city-center but in an old weary building. Interior was kitschy and patchy. Some cheap plastic flowers on the desk, brand new steel seats for the visitors presented a surrealist scene a 21st century bank which the largest in India 43rd in the world.

I was with my wife and we had prepared ourselves for a long queue (usual for a public sector bank) and a tedious process, so we even carried a water bottle along. We filled the requisite form and submitted at one of the desks. The lady at the counter took precisely 60 seconds and the work was done! We were amazed. We were strolling around for another piece of work and the same lady saw us. She got talking to us to see if we wanted her help in anything else. This warmth and efficiency at a public sector bank just floored us.

This was however, was somewhat consistent with some of our findings from our research at Turian Labs, regarding customer experience in physical banking. Several professional (as customers) our teams spoke to across India had a consistent feedback that SBI (State Bank of India) had WARMTH, while other private banks appeared COLD. Respondent went on to say that people at the counter and around us, talk more warmly, though at times the processes are slower . While private banks are pretty efficient with processes as well but they appear cold. “HDFC bank is well designed and people work more efficiently, but the whole experience is very cold for us”- one of the customers of a private bank (HDFC) told us, who also had an account at SBI. One of the respondent, who was probably sixty years of age, liked the SBI experience because he gets to chat with people around. He said, “when I go to private sector banks, no one is really pushing me out but there is an unsaid rush on the faces of the staff”. This was not a scientifically designed study and we can not generalize the findings however, as a dipstick of a qualitative research, there was a strong pattern.

On a deeper level, when we see the picture above, the interiors may look kitschy but rested. Many middle class homes in India have ‘kitschy’ interiors by those standards. By the very reason those homes, DO NOT appear like another hotel room. But they are warm and lived. This ‘home like’ feeling must be adding to the feeling of warmth at the banks as well. In the process of making UX avant-garde and efficient, designers at times, forget the element of ‘comfort’ and ‘warmth’ that may be needed to make it inclusive. And the key may lie in NOT UPSETTING everything that is given. Some SEAMLESSNESS in the ONTOLOGIES would be a great cue.

Robert Herrick’s famous poem may be a case in point to design the interactions at these public offices:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.