MiA, Gobierno de Aragón
2023
Making tax debts and exam deadlines clear enough to act on
Problem area
Correct information nobody could use
Government writing is built to be legally exact, which is not the same as being clear. People were failing at things that mattered to them, and almost never because they did not care. They could not tell what a status meant, or they never saw a deadline coming until it had already passed.
How we found out
Workshops with citizens, sessions with the teams who run these processes, and watching how people were served at a public office counter.
Where people were getting stuck
01
Oportunity
Make every legal status readable without a lawyer, a relative, or a phone call.
02
Opportunity
Show what is due and how much time is left, at every step of both processes.
Design goals
What I aimed to achieve
Always show the clock
Make what is due, and how long is left, impossible to miss.
Let people finish alone
No phone call, no office visit, no relative who understands it better.
All of it built inside DESY, the government's design system, which already met the WCAG AA level Spanish law requires of public services.
Design decision 01 · Debts and payments
Making four legal states readable at a glance
Every tax debt sits in one of four legal states, and each one changes what you owe and who is collecting it. For the length of the project I was in the tax department almost every week to get them right. Then I coded them by severity, so the worst news reads before anyone reads a word.
The four states, on one screen
Red once a surcharge has started, black when it leaves for the national agency, grey when it is paused, and no tag at all when there is nothing to worry about yet.
01
Voluntary period
Still inside the deadline, nothing extra to pay.
02
Enforcement period
Deadline passed, a surcharge is added under article 28.2.
03
Moved to the national agency
The debt leaves the regional office for a different organisation entirely.
04
Suspended
Paused, usually because the person asked to split the payment.
When the debt leaves the regional office
State three hands the debt to Spain's national tax agency. Rather than say so and stop, the screen names the department and gives the number to call.
Design decision 02 · Debts and payments
Showing what you owe, by when, and how to pay it
MiA shows a debt but does not collect it. Payment happens at a bank, using an official payment letter, or automatically by direct debit. So the job was not to build a checkout. It was to make sure nobody is left wondering how much they owe, how long they have, or what to do next.
Opening a debt
Four things every debt has to answer
01
Urgency before scrolling
A red banner at the top of the list carries the total overdue amount.
02
The deadline, counted down
Not just a date. The days remaining sit beside it, in red.
03
The money, broken down
Principal, surcharges and total on separate lines, so the number is never a surprise.
04
The document that lets you pay
The official payment letter, ready to download and take to a bank.
All of it, at two sizes
People use MiA at a desk while doing paperwork, and on a phone in the middle of something else. Every state, panel and button had to hold up at both sizes. Neither version is a cut-down of the other.
The same screen, desktop and phone
People use MiA at a desk while doing paperwork, and on a phone in the middle of something else. Every state, panel and button had to hold up at both sizes. Neither version is a cut-down of the other.
The same information, in the same order of importance, laid out to fit each screen.
Design decision 03 · Public exams
Showing a months-long process as one timeline
Applying for a public sector job in Spain runs for months: you apply, you wait for the admitted list, you sit up to three exams, then a merit phase, then a final resolution, then the appointment itself. Every stage has its own legal deadline. I worked with the department that runs these exams to map the real sequence, then built one view that holds all of it.
Every stage of one exam, in order
All the exams you are following
Someone can follow several exams at once, each moving at its own pace, without tracking any of it themselves.
Four things every debt has to answer
01
Where am I?
The current stage is marked, everything ahead stays visible.
02
Is anything waiting for me?
Payments and documents appear on the stage that needs them.
03
How long do I have?
Deadlines carry the days remaining, not just a date.
Design decision 04 · Public exams
Turning a rejection into a clear next step
The hardest moment in the process is being provisionally excluded. Your application has a problem and Spanish law gives you a short window to fix it. Miss it and months of preparation are gone. So this screen does three things at once, and keeps the rest of the process in view underneath.
Excluded, with a way back
What the screen shows together
01
Why you were excluded
The exact reasons, in the department's own official wording.
02
How long you have
Ten working days, in red, next to the status.
03
The button that fixes it
Directly under the reasons, not on another page.
And when it goes well
Results arrive with the context that makes them mean something: how many passed, the cutoff mark, and your own.
Validation
Nothing shipped on an assumption
Each area of MiA went through its own research cycle rather than one study at the start. For debts and public exams that meant sessions with the departments that own each process, then testing prototypes with real people while the design was still changeable, and again before release.
Testing sessions
Prototypes were put in front of real users while the design could still change, not after it shipped.
Where people were getting stuck
Retrospective
Designing for people who did not choose to be here
Nobody opens a government debt page for fun, and nobody enjoys tracking an exam application. When someone is dealing with money they owe or a job they might lose, design is not about delight. It is about removing every reason to give up before the task is done.
The departments could tell me what was legally true. Deciding what a worried person needed to see first was still my job.
A phone call became a screen
Sources
See it for yourself
This was built for a government, so the numbers, the dates and the award are all a matter of public record.