Thread by @covid19indiaorg

Experience of a volunteer in our team who was able to book vaccination appointment on cowin.gov.in today:

➡️ Accessed the website few minutes past 9am. Entered mobile number to receive OTP.
➡️ Initially there was a delay in receiving the OTP.

1/n

➡️ The website took quite a while to move from the first screen to the next where OTP could be entered.
➡️ Received the OTP after a wait of 5 to 10 minutes. This looked to be an initial issue. Subsequent requests for OTP happened without delays.

2/n

➡️ Was presented with a screen to enter details of vaccine beneficiary. The data entry was straightforward with ID card type, number, name gender and year of birth required to be entered.
➡️ After doing the registration, there was option to enter additional beneficiaries.

3/n

➡️ Overall the process of entering personal details was straightforward and easy.
➡️ Recommend to keep the id card number, name as in card and year of birth ready. Especially if you are entering data on behalf of someone (for eg. your parents).

4/n

➡️ Moved onto schedule appointment and this is where it got a bit confusing.
➡️ You need to enter the state, district and block of your location. Found that the blocks available in drop down were not consistent with the ones we were familiar with.

5/n

➡️ Rather, the actual block of our locality was not available in the drop down and had to select the closest one. While there was a pin code option, it would not show values unless the state, district and block were selected!
➡️ Should allow search directly by pin code.

6/n

➡️ After selecting till the block level, the available vaccination centers were displayed.
➡️ Had to click on each vaccination center and then check for available appointment slots.
➡️ May be because it's the 1st day, the vast majority of centers did not have availability.

7/n

➡️ We had few preferred vaccination centers, but they did not have any slots for the whole month of March and had to select a center that was not in our preference list initially.
➡️ Spent 30+ minutes going through all the center options and checking for free slots.

8/n

➡️ Selected the vaccination center + date, had the option to choose first or second half of the day and proceed to book the appointment.
➡️ A booking confirmation was immediately generated. Yay!

📣 Registration process: Delay with getting OTP initially, otherwise seamless.

9/n

📣 Entering personal data: Simple and seamless.

📣 Searching for vaccination center: Can be better, especially if search by pin code is possible without entering details of block.

📣 Searching for free slot: This consumed time as had to check each center for availability.

10/n

📣 Will be good to make searching by availability easier, than making the user go through each center and different dates to get availability details.

📣 Is this available in languages other than English? If not, how will a non English language speaker take an appointment?

11/n

📣 Less technically oriented persons will find this slightly challenging, especially considering the 60+ ages group being targeted.

📣 All of us should actively volunteer to help out our elderly acquaintances/family/domestic help etc. who need help with this.

n/n