While designing for GovTech Edu, I had the chance to lead the design of Akun Belajar.id (an official single sign-on account from The Ministry of Education, Research and Technology of Indonesia). This has become one of the biggest projects I've ever worked on, and the one I've put the most pride into.

What is Single Sign-On?

Single sign-on (SSO) is a session and user authentication service that permits a user to use one set of login credentials -- for example, a name and password -- to access multiple applications.

What's so challenging on building one?

To put this in perspective, the users of this app range from 17,000 different islands, with approximately over 748 local dialects, and (as of 1st Aug 2022) over 5 million teachers and 24 million students.

The above are just a few of the given challenges we solve day-in and day-out. What creates further challenge in this ever growing environment is the legacy and system that was left from the previous Ministry and their way of doing things.

Three things that have kept me motivated, agile and creative during the product development:

1. Marry the vision, not the small decisions. Learn to compromise.

Working across platforms, programs and agendas can be hard. What's harder is when we have to make sure all needs are met. The decisions that I've made along the way have sometimes had to go through a back and forth between yes and no. Whether that's a yes, and then 2 months later becomes a no due to new circumstances - then so be it. When designing a product, sometimes it can be easy to miss the bigger picture.

2. Ask why, all the time. Validate your problem and find the underlying roots of the issue.

There's always a need to stop researching and take action. However, understanding a problem and analysing it with the right mindset might give us the opportunity to look at things from a different perspective. Being in the team that deals with so many stakeholders, I understand that making sure we understand the underlying root of the issue is important to create a better product for the user.

3. Prioritising, is priority.

If there's one area where my skill has improved since being involved in this project, it is being able to prioritize quickly and efficiently. Without the ability to prioritise, everything will come at you at any given time - which can severely impact your goal.

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Next up

3 Challenges of Building Brands for Government Institutions →

3 things I learned from building the biggest education SSO in the world