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Requesting a scholarship for higher education has been made remarkably simpler. On the initiative of Flemish secretary of Education Frank Vandenbroucke and Flemish secretary of Administrative Simplification Geert Bourgeois, it can now be done in a few minutes.

Requesting scholarships with the Flemish government

The user simply points the browser to https://daf.vlaanderen.be/daf/. An intelligent online form will guide the user through the different questions. Based on the answers, an automatic message will be generated, indicating if additional documents (e.g. a lease for a student den) need to be sent along with the form. These documents can either be sent by surface mail or they can be scanned and posted digitally.

The project demanded a three million euro investment and has been operational since the previous academic year. This academic year a next step has been taken. The requests can now be made digitally so that even the form for basic information is now largely filled in automatically. This is possible thanks to MAGDA (Maximal DataSharing Among Administrations), the Flemish hub for data exchange that was created by secretary Bourgeois at the beginning of this year.

Human Interface Group was hired by the consortium EDS/Telindus to assist them in developing this digital request form for scholarships from the Flemish government.

The project

As part of the process of administrative simplification and E-government, the Flemish government introduced the VIP program. This program supports all governmental projects that contribute to a user friendly, electronic and simplified government. One of these projects is the digital request form for scholarships.

The challenge

Human Interface Group was hired to make sure the project lived up to the demands of the VIP program. The challenge for Human Interface Group was to scrutinize the deliverables of the consortium EDS/Telindus in such a way that the final result would be an accessible, easy to use, intuitive and quickly processed digital request form.

What we did

Human Interface Group was first contacted when the use cases and the wireframes (static designs) were delivered. A thorough expert review of both deliverables was conducted, based on the needs analysis and the standard user interface guidelines:

• Will users find their way through the application?
• Will users understand all the questions asked and always know what to fill in?
• Are the right controls used?
• Do users get enough feedback?

This first expert review of the wireframes resulted in a comprehensive list of remarks and recommendations. Where necessary Human Interface Group proposed new designs.

For example, Human Interface Group recommended to improve the layout of the form and to provide more information about what to fill in.

Based on the results of the first expert review, a functional prototype of the request form was developed. Human Interface Group rewrote the text for every screen and conducted a second expert review which mainly focused on navigation and functionality:

• Can users navigate efficiently between the different screens?
• Do all the controls work like users will expect them to work?
• Do users get enough feedback after executing an action?

Again Human Interface Group delivered an extensive list of remarks and recommendations to the development team. This resulted in a second prototype of the digital request form in which the recommendations of Human Interface Group were integrated. As a final research the request form was presented to its end users.

A heterogeneous group of test users, representative for the target group of the request form, was selected in the whole of Flanders. The testing experts of Human Interface Group visited the test users at their home and invited them to fill in the request form and perform other related tasks in the application. By letting real life users perform all those tasks, Human Interface Group got the information needed to perfect the request form.

The result

Citizens can now request scholarships in a simplified and efficient way:

• Users are guided through the form by different, understandable questions.
• Information already known by the government is automatically filled in.
• Based on the answers, citizens are informed about which documents to submit.
• The forms can be processed much faster.

Take a look at https://daf.vlaanderen.be/daf/ to see for yourself.

The test users acknowledge this:

• “It’s easier.”
• “You don’t have to look up so much.”
• “I would request a scholarship online.”

Related pages

Refer to:
Services: Evaluation for more information about expert evaluations;
Services: Design for more information about user interface (re)design.