In our Design Development Studio class during my master's in Human-Computer Interaction, our professor gave us a project, conducted in collaboration with Service Canada on the Old Age Security program.

When the brief came, it was about 'developing a web system' to increase enrolment to the program, but we knew without research to understand the real problem, that was just jumping to a solution. So the story of our work on this project for an entire semester began.

As we were presenting our insights in teams and talking about 'potential' solutions, 3 big approaches seemed to emerge, and everyone had an idea that they believed in more.

For me, based on research and discussions, one obvious thing was helping those who help people fill and complete their applications. Then based on this, we formed new teams to follow those ideas.

Knowing our challenges, and focused on trying to help our champions, we generated ideas. That would tackle outreach, engagement, support to social workers, creating new champions, increasing visibility. Some of them were crazier but hey, that's all part of the process. And it wasn't just our team, we all had interesting and cool approaches, but were we addressing the actual problem? Reaching and enrolling the most vulnerable?

Going back to our challenges, looking at our personas, we knew we had something right, but we weren't addressing enough.

Three things keep reminding themselves to us:

1. Amount of proof needed (and what was accepted as proof)

2. Complicated forms (as usual with government applications)

3. Lack of support for champions

So a new idea was born.

We called our solution "I'll vouch for you".

We designed a "Fastlane" form to be used by champions to help applicants apply for OAS. It allowed couple important things.

First, it would accept secondary proofs, things that would help prove identity and residency. We divided proofs into two, primary being federal sources and secondary being provincial and municipal. Either 2 primary sources, or if you cannot, as many as you can from secondary sources would be enough. That secondary sources list was elaborated on the one Election Canada uses! This includes cards (e.g. library card, fishing license), prescription bottles and more; simply proofs that are non-paper but still potentially useful.

Champion and applicant would fill the form together, champion 'vouching' for the applicant regarding the information provided. And a consent form to allow Service Canada to look for more information on the applicant on federal systems.

All three teams presented their ideas to Service Canada, in formats they wanted, and we created an accompanying solution brief explaining challenges, and how our solutions address them. That was the end of semester by then.

One of the other teams, from what I can remember, suggested something even bigger; changing the requirement from 40 years to minimum 10, for everyone. Then initiating the auto-enrolment based on that, and mailing everyone who isn't auto enrolled. After a while, we heard something about 10 years of residency being the standard getting real.

I didn't follow up on when or if it is already done, or if they ended up incorporating some of the other solutions or parts of it either.

This was an amazing and challenging project.

Very little time for how much was unknown, yet we did our best. Thinking back on the whole journey, I think these are the most important lessons for anyone and for any project:

• Never jump to a solution without understanding and defining the problem.

• Not every experience is digital, what matters is ensuring a good experience regardless of the and across formats and mediums.

• People aren’t fixed objects like a property, don’t expect them to be one.

• Talk to people, and keep talking with them. Go out there.

• Observe; dont ask what they want, watch them as they do.

• Nothing is fixed, even ‘mandatory requirements’, as long as you have the evidence to show how it negatively affects people or does the opposite of your goals.