We start off with an early Bhela call in January 2025 to present ideas on how to improve the interface of openIMIS and make it more user friendly. Several implementer & developer teams had been working on this topic during the last month and will feed the discussion with their inputs on:

A newly developed design guideline for openIMIS

During a four-month student project, Marvin Marqua at SwissTPH focused on designing a new openIMIS design guideline. By including current users and best-practice heuristics, he described multiple guides which can enhance the user experience in the future. During his input, he will dive deeper into the developed guidelines as well as the implemented prototype. Furthermore, he will discuss the chances and challenges of introducing a design guideline for openIMIS.

openIMIS enrolment through mobile app/self-enrolment

Tinker Tech from Nepal improved the enrolment application, for multi-user support (insure, enrolment officer, hospitals), link to online payment and extended offline functionalities. Sunil Parajuli will talk about the original requirements expressed by different partners in Nepal and Lao PDR and how developed features can be further developed for the global version.

Ressources:

• openIMIS Design guidelines

• Self registration / Mobile App enrollment

Co-ordinates

Date: 08.01.2025

Time: 10.00 AM Central European Time (CET)

Room: Jitsi Meet (https://meet.jit.si/openIMISImplementers)

(jitsi claims to support Chrome, Chromium & MS Edge and Firefox browsers only.  You might also want to try the jitsi app)

Participants: (kindly only add yourself, not others):

Schedule

Summary

The openIMIS Bhela on 8 January focused on UX and UI design for openIMIS. UX considers the ‘user experience’ of a product and focuses on how easy and intuitive a product is to use, while UI or ‘user interface’ looks at the graphical components, such as buttons, icons, and page layouts. Several implementer and developer teams have been looking at how to make the openIMIS user interface more user friendly, and two of these teams presented their work at the Bhela.

Marvin Marqua of Swiss TPH gave an overview of his recent work looking at optimal UX/UI design strategies for a health insurance platform such as openIMIS, tailored to the specific needs of low- and lower-middle-income countries. Based on research conducted from October 2024 to January 2025, Marvin developed recommendations for improving the user experience and incorporated them into a new guideline, available on the openIMIS wiki. He then used the guideline to develop a prototype of an openIMIS front end module and compared the updated module with the existing one. While openIMIS already incorporates many of the UX/UI best practices, there is a need to maintain these high standards and ensure they continue to be applied as new functionalities are developed and new users join.

Sunil Parajuli of Tinker Tech in Nepal then presented his team’s work on self-registration into the health insurance scheme, and an updated mobile application for enrolment. The aim is to integrate the Nepali mobile application into the openIMIS modular architecture so that it is available globally. Sunil’s presentation covered the App’s new features – some of which are still in development – including extended offline functionalities, multiple user logins (e.g., the insured, enrolment officer, healthcare provider), compatibility with online payment systems, and adaptability to other social protection schemes.

Uwe Wahser rounded off the Bhela by congratulating both parties on their important contributions to the openIMIS community. He highlighted the importance of involving academics who have the time to look into these important issues in detail, bringing both an outside view and a clear mindset.

A further session on UX/UI - during the Developers Deep Dive on 14 Jan 2025 - will look at the work of 2M Corp (The Gambia) on re-designing the openIMIS user interface for the employment portal of the formal sector health insurance program under KADCHMA, Nigeria (Kaduna State).