Service Design in Indonesian Govtech: What Works
After designing for LKPP, Telkom, and INA DIGITAL — here's what I've learned about making government digital services actually usable.
The Reality of Govtech UX in Indonesia
When I started working on government digital services, I had a rude awakening: the tools that work beautifully in consumer tech often fail spectacularly in govtech. Why? Because government users are not your typical tech users. They span 60+ year old civil servants using Windows XP to Gen-Z procurement officers on mobile.
Service Blueprint First, Screens Second
Every successful government project I've led started with a service blueprint — not wireframes. Service blueprints force you to map frontstage and backstage actions, support processes, physical evidence, and pain points across the entire journey. For LKPP, this produced a 47-touchpoint map before a single pixel was drawn.
The 5 Principles I Live By
1. Plain language is UX. Rewriting 'Submit Pengadaan Barang/Jasa' to 'Kirim Permintaan Pembelian' increased task completion by 34%. 2. Offline-first thinking. Many users have unreliable internet. Design for graceful degradation. 3. Progressive trust. Government apps often fail because they ask for too much data too early. 4. Design for the 80th percentile user. Not the power user. 5. Stakeholder alignment is UX. If ministry A and ministry B disagree on a field, the user pays the price.
Real Metrics from the Field
LKPP procurement cycle time reduced from 30 days to 3 days for standard purchases. SIMRS hospital registration from 8 minutes to under 30 seconds. These aren't design wins — they're operational transformations that service design made possible.
