Digital Service Design · UX · Public Services
The Challenge
For foreigners entering Latvia, OCMA is the first institutional touchpoint — and the experience often felt like a bureaucratic maze. The process was linear, impersonal, and built around institutional logic rather than the user's actual journey.
Different applicants — students, workers, family members, refugees — all had different needs and different paths. The challenge was to design a service that could recognize that complexity and respond to it with clarity rather than adding friction.
The Client
OCMA is Latvia's government agency responsible for citizenship, residency, and migration services. As Latvia's integration with the EU deepened and migration patterns grew more complex, OCMA sought to modernize the way applicants experienced and navigated their services — starting with a digital-first redesign of the applicant journey.
The Approach
The engagement began by mapping applicant journeys in person — visiting OCMA offices, observing real interactions, and highlighting the phases where confusion, drop-off, and frustration were highest. Staff co-creation sessions brought institutional knowledge into the process, ensuring the redesign was not just user-centered but operationally viable.
An organizational capability scan identified where digital solutions could reduce load on frontline staff. Rapid prototype testing, using Maze and Figma, allowed early validation of concepts with real applicants before any build commitments were made.
The Outcome
The project delivered a working prototype for a personalized digital portal — one that adapts the applicant's checklist and guidance based on their nationality, visa category, and purpose of stay. Rather than presenting everyone with the same long document, the portal surfaces only what is relevant.
My contributions spanned solution prototyping and wireframing, stakeholder management across government and design teams, user research with applicants from multiple countries, and market analysis comparing digital migration service models across Europe.