The Problem
Malawi's government services are organized the way every government organizes itself: Government → Ministry → Department → Service. That structure makes sense internally. It means nothing to a citizen. Someone who needs a passport doesn't think in terms of "Ministry of Homeland Security, Department of Immigration" — they think "I need a passport," and today that thought has to survive a maze of different offices, websites, and queues before it becomes a completed application.
M-Gov Malawi's core bet is that this gap — between how government is organized and how citizens actually think — is the real UX problem. Not the visual polish of any single form.
The Goal
Collapse "Government → Ministry → Department → Service" into "what do you need to do?" — and then don't stop at pointing the citizen to the right department. Carry them through the entire task: find the service, see the requirements, apply, pay, submit, and track it, inside one app.
Design Decisions
Two entry points into the same catalog, because citizens split into two groups. Some people arrive not knowing government's categories at all — they know their life situation. Others already know exactly what they need and just want to search. M-Gov handles both without forcing either group through the other's mental model.
Both screens lead into the same underlying service catalog — they're two different doors into one building, not two different buildings. That's the actual information-architecture insight: the split isn't in the data, it's in how two different users start their search.
The question format does real work. "What are you doing?" is a deliberately conversational header — not "Select a Category" or "Browse Services." It puts the citizen's situation first and the bureaucratic label second (each life-event card's description — "Register a company, get tax IDs, and find business licenses" — is where the ministry-level detail actually lives, once it's no longer the entry point).
Trust is designed for, not assumed. A government app carries a credibility problem that a consumer app doesn't — most citizens' default trusted channel is a physical office with a stamp and a queue. The welcome screen addresses this directly: the national coat of arms, a plain-language value proposition ("Find, apply for and track government services from one place"), and a visible trust signal ("Trusted by over 1 Million Citizens") before asking for a single tap.
Warm, not clinical. A cream background instead of stark white, a deep forest green tied to national identity without literally reproducing the flag, and bold black display type for headlines. The palette reads as serious and official without feeling cold or like a legacy government portal — a deliberate distance from the visual language most citizens already associate with slow bureaucracy.
Color-coded categories for fast wayfinding. Each life-event and category card carries a distinct icon in a soft-tinted rounded square. At a glance, a returning user can find their category by color and shape before reading a single word — important in an app meant to serve people who will use it rarely and can't be expected to relearn its layout each time.
The Structural Idea
Once a citizen picks either a life event or a service, the intended flow doesn't stop at an information page — it's the step-by-step task itself: see requirements, start the application, enter information, upload documents, review, pay, submit, then track status through to notification. The two screens above are the front door to that flow, not the whole house — their job is to get a citizen from "I need a passport" into the actual application with zero need to know which department issues it.
The six main sections (Home, Services, Applications, Documents, Payments, Profile) reinforce the same idea after onboarding: "Applications" tracks progress the way a citizen already thinks about it — my passport, my business registration — not "Immigration Department requests" and "Registrar General requests" as separate silos.
Outcome
A citizen opens the app with a life situation, not an org chart, in mind — and the interface is built to meet them there first, with the bureaucratic structure available as detail underneath, never as the entry requirement.
Screens shown: welcome, home (life events), service categories. Full service set — including the passport application flow — is available in the linked Figma file.