Co-"WIN"? - Pain Points and Improvement Opportunities

The Panic and Pain

As the whole nation rushes to get vaccinated, the top site for Indians to visit nowadays has become cowin.gov.in. People often give up playing fastest-finger-first on Co-WIN to book slots and end up reaching centres for walk-in shots. With vaccine shortages reported from various locations across the country, local administrations often find themselves in difficult situations managing huge crowds at vaccination centres, jostling for a shot. It is really ironic that in this chaos at vaccination centres, people get exposed to risks of contracting the same illness for which they are desperately trying to get a vaccine in the first place.

The above may be due to a variety of reasons like problems in the Supply Chain, State Level Process Implementation, etc. but this article will not deal with those since they are matters where I do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to comment on.

Therefore, my focus area for this article is the gaps and improvement opportunities in the Co-WIN site itself from the software functionality point of view.

While the Co-Win site has a decent look and feel, the lack of functional depth in the appointment booking mechanism leaves much to be desired. As a Product Management professional, it was impossible for me to overlook these functional flaws in Co-WIN.

Functional Gaps & Improvement Opportunities in Co-WIN

Searching by PIN Code:

Gap: While this may be suitable for locations where one PIN Code covers a large area, this is impractical for urban areas where you have multiple PIN Codes clustered together. Is the user really expected to search for centres around his area by searching for an individual PIN Code and repeating the process 4-5 times for the 4-5 PIN Codes around his place of residence?

Solution: This can be easily addressed by simply allowing comma separated input comprising of multiple PIN Codes in one go so that the search results can display centres in all those PIN Codes at once. This can come in handy for precision searches where users want to only search for availability in a couple of specific centres.

Searching By District:

Gap: The current Search By District is dependent on fixed dropdowns. With a very large chunk of India accessing this site through mobile, it may be slightly inconvenient to scroll through two dropdowns trying to locate your state and district every time you want to search by district.

Solution: Using auto-complete dropdowns like this one may ease out this minor but irritating pain-point.

Irritating Filters:

Gap: A small but persistent irritant - the filters get reset every-time you click on search to refresh the availability of your search results! It is really painful to do this multiple times if you are in the 18-44 slot and are trying to compete with thousands of other users for a coveted vaccine slot!

Solution: This can be simply addressed by storing the user's filter preferences at least for a single session. Alternatively, a simple refresh button for the search results that keeps the filters intact while just refreshing the availability of the search results would be of great help.

The Reactive Concept of Booking Appointments:

Gap: The whole concept of booking appointments is reactive right now where users have to play fastest-finger-first in order to book appointments. Considering the gap between demand and supply of vaccines, it is obvious that the few slots made available daily get completely booked in seconds. The fastest users win and the remaining have to risk huge lines for walk-ins, also putting those who booked appointments at risk by increasing the crowding at centres, or they have to simply wait for the demand-supply situation to stabilize. In this situation, where even the most tech-savvy users have to play fastest-finger-first for days until they finally get a slot, what would happen to those who aren't tech-savvy? The stated purpose of Co-WIN was to facilitate equitable distribution of vaccines to citizens. The current appointment booking concept falls short of expectations on that front.

Solution: In a country where everyone is used to the concept of waiting lists, thanks to IRCTC, why can't we have the same for Co-WIN too?

Instead of making users book only available slots, the site must allow the user to enter upto 5 preferred centres for vaccination, and preferred time if any. Based on this, the user must be automatically added to the waiting list for each of these. Whenever vaccine is available for the said centre, the user can be sent an alert via sms/whatsapp/email asking to confirm presence. Automated IVR Calling can also be used for this purpose. If presence not confirmed in 60 mins, the user can be moved to the end of the waiting list of that centre and the slot can be given to the next one in the list. If presence confirmed but no show, user can be removed from waiting list of all centres as punitive action, subject to public policy decisions. In terms of implementation, if the govt. doesn't want to build this from scratch, they can simply use the extremely evolved booking system from IRCTC with minimal customizations. This can really eliminate the need for thousands of people to play fastest-finger-first everyday and will also ensure equitable distribution of vaccines to people irrespective of how tech-savvy they are.

Efficient Dose Allocation for Vaccination Centres:

Gap: There are reports of some centres having a TAT of 10 mins per person whereas there are centres in the same district on the same day where people do not get vaccines even after booking and then waiting in queue for 3-4 hrs. This indicates that there is a serious flaw in the logic used for dose allocation to each centre within the district. I do not have visibility on how this decision is made and whether it is manual or automated, but there is certainly scope for improvement here because several times while following the daily routine of checking Co-WIN, I have come across centres where there are unused slots displayed at the end of the day.

Solution: What can really help here is, measuring the efficiency of each centre based on staff strength and facility conditions, estimating daily vaccination capacity at the measured level of efficiency, looking at the average daily footfall, available supply of doses for the district and then finally determining the allocation using an algorithm that takes into account these factors. Simplifying this, it is possible to calculate the total no. of people that the centre vaccinate in one day assuming vaccine supply is unlimited. Every centre will have such a maximum number. The allocation logic must make sure that under no circumstances the centre receives more vaccines than what it can consume in one day. This will leave spare doses for other centres where there is capacity as well as footfall but insufficient doses. Similarly, the other constraints described above can be used to polish this allocation algorithm further. This can help average out the vaccination TAT at all centres to an acceptable value and ease out the load on already stressed out crowd control mechanism and personnel.

Conclusion:

The above gaps and suggestions are my personal observations as a user of Co-WIN. I do appreciate the efforts by those involved in the development of this site. It is a welcome change from the completely offline mode that we used to have for any govt initiative only a few years ago. However, considering the seriousness of the situation and the sheer scale of the problem that this site is expected to help us solve, there is much that can be improved to give citizens a seamless and convenient experience.

From the Product Management perspective, while writing this article, my belief in the concept of using your product as a user to truly understand the pain points, has been reinforced.

And lastly, if any of the concerned authorities happen to read this and implement some of these suggestions, or find even better solutions for these pain-points, the purpose of this article would then be truly achieved. :)