By Christophe de Liège

 

Fetish ;))

 

Fathers Day !

 

Billion Users, Million Journeys : By Sridhar Dhulipala (Principal Advisor at UIDAI)

 

(From LinkedIn post by the author) 

On January 28th, 2026 at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi, Hon. Minister Shri Jitin Prasada and the UIDAI leadership team dedicated the new Aadhaar app to the nation. The location wasn't merely ceremonial; it crystallized what we've been building toward.

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Why Ambedkar's Thinking matters to Design

Dr. Ambedkar wrote: "Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent." - source: "Writings and Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual"

This isn't abstract philosophy; it's an architectural imperative for Digital Public Infrastructure.

When you design for 1.4 billion people, the default approach is to create personas: segment users into 5-7 archetypes, design for the "average," optimize for majority use cases. But this forces each individual to dissolve into a representative bucket. The 90-year-old farmer in Bihar and the PhD scholar in Bangalore both become "User Persona 3."

The combinatorial reality

Early in our UX strategy work, we rejected conventional persona thinking. Primary research with volunteers from across academia and industry; National Institute of Design, Prakash Sharma and Reshma from 1001 Stories, Vandita, Lavanya, Sandeep Karmarkar, Jay Dutta and many others. Multiple conversations revealed something stark: each Aadhaar holder faces a unique combination of constraints.

The mathematics is unforgiving:

15 Languages × 5 Literacy Levels × 5 Device Types × 4 Connectivity States × 5 Accessibility Needs × 4 Experience Levels = 4,320,000 possible user contexts

Only 3% have the "ideal" configuration: high literacy, smartphone, broadband, no disabilities, prior digital experience.

The remaining 97% face multiple simultaneous barriers.

This isn't additive (language OR literacy OR connectivity). It's multiplicative. A Hindi-speaking user with low literacy on a feature phone with 2G connectivity and motor impairment experiences the world fundamentally differently from a Hindi-speaking user with low literacy on a smartphone with 5G.

Each drop that must not dissolve.

At the immediate level, we recognized the Aadhaar holders fears, anxieties, hopes, aspirations around identity and credentials; emotive anchors. We observed Aadhaar holders go laminate their updated Aadhaar letters to protect the document as a first step. We discovered that even well heeled young generation alpha individuals were standing in queues at Aadhaar Seva Kendra's, because their parents felt Aadhaar is too important to do online, preferring an operator assisted mode. The designers and engineers built the new Aadhaar app inspired by these insights - a sleeve on the virtual card within the app, optimized the process to update credentials, as a combination of language that is easier to understand, and eliminates the need to visit a physical center to update mobile number, so on. More features to be rolled out.

The one feature I personally liked most is the ability to share just what user wants, lending more agency to the Aadhaar holder. Even a zero knowledge proof based declaration demonstrating above 18 adult, or above 60 senior citizen, without disclosing any PII.

Journeys are architecture, not artifact

If we have a more usable, appealing design, using easier to understand language, what remains to be designed, and built for future versions is the premise: Billion Users, Million Journeys.

This means journey design becomes architecture, generative, not templated. We don't create 180 static screens; we build 180 design primitives that compute contextually appropriate interfaces based on each user's coordinate.

One canonical regulatory requirement. Multiple adaptive paths to reach it.

But that is a work in progress in a long journey for design. We will leverage modern technology including AI to achieve this.

Language as the first barrier

Our usage analytics revealed a paradox: 99% of users stay in English, despite having language options.

Is this preference or failure? Do millions miss the language-switch button because they can't read the English label that says "change language"? Are our Indic vocabularies too formal, too dense with technical jargon that are difficult to to translate. Do users prefer colloquial transliterations for terms like "OTP," "QR code," "biometric authentication" instead of formal neologisms? Dive deeper with this in-depth post by Dharmesh BA 🕵🏽♂️

We're experimenting with something different: multimodal alongside multilingual.

What if users could interact with English on screen but tap a "Kya Likha Hai?" button to hear colloquial explanations in their preferred Indian language devoid of technical formality, using the language they actually speak?

Two questions that unite India

Whether in a village panchayat or a corporate boardroom, Indians evaluate any new system through two instinctive questions:

1. "Kya likha hai?" (What does it say?)
2. "Faida kya hai?" (What's the benefit?)

These aren't just user research insights, they're the litmus test for inclusive design at population scale.

"Kya likha hai?" isn't asking for translation; it's asking for comprehension. Can I understand this in my context, at my literacy level, in my language, through my sensory capabilities? If a user with low literacy taps "Kya Likha Hai?" and hears a voice explanation that uses everyday language, not bureaucratic Hindi or English jargon, that's inclusion.

"Faida kya hai?" isn't asking for feature lists; it's asking for relevance. What does this do for MY life? Why should I trust this? How does this serve my specific situation, not some abstract "citizen"?

Not just the Aadhaar app, but those in other sectors ie. fintech, healthcare, education, and so on, must answer both questions for each of their million journeys, and not just for one canonical path. I have suggested the idea of a new kind of DPI - DPIx or 'Experience DPI' to complement the foundation DPIs viz. Aadhaar, UPI, AA, etc. Check it here in this op-ed piece carried by The Economic Times (23 Jan, 2026).

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In conclusion, quoting Dr. Ambedkar - "An ideal society should be mobile, should be full of channels for conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts. In an ideal society, there should be many interests consciously communicated and shared."

As a principle its in recognition of the democratic individual, who exists within a society and has a reciprocal relationship, ideally. Every individual Aadhaar holder should ideally preserve their unique context, gender, literacy level, language, disability status, location, when they engage with society at population scale.

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Acknowledgments

I'm grateful to Shri Neelkanth Mishra (Chairman, UIDAI) for the opportunity to contribute to this vision, and to the remarkable team at UIDAI: Shri Bhuvnesh Kumar ji (CEO, UIDAI), Shri Vivek Chandra Verma ji (Dy Director General, UIDAI - Media & Usage), Tanusree Deb Barma ma'am (Dy Director General, UIDAI Tech Center), Barada Prasad Sabut ji (Head of Engineering, UIDAI Tech Center), and the spirited design team led by Kirti Vardhan Rathore 👏.

Design is a first-class citizen at UIDAI. The journey to good design has begun in earnest, and it's a long-haul commitment.

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Room in the elephant - Kay Ryan

 

The pale blue dot : Karl Sagan

 

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 

at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. 

The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future 

in Space," in which he wrote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us." 

The above image, “Pale Blue Dot Revisited,” was created in 2020 for the 30th anniversary of the iconic picture. 

The updated version used modern image-processing software and techniques to revisit the well-known Voyager view, 

while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) 

A passage from the book : 

“In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” 

A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”

कवितेचा हात : -पूजा भडांगे

लिहून खोडलेल्या असंख्य गोष्टी

फाडून फेकलेली कित्येक पानं

शांत राहून मनातल्या मनात गिळलेली शेकडो दुःखं

डोळे मिटून आटवलेला प्रत्येक अश्रू

अकालीच स्वभावात उतरलेलं मौन

स्वप्नांत मारलेल्या कितीतरी हाका

वाचता वाचता गोठून गेलेला सगळा वर्तमान

आणि स्तब्ध होत पुढ्यात उभं राहिलेलं शहाणपण

कवितेच्या समोर उभं राहून एक वेगळं जग दाखवतं तेव्हा;

आपण कवितेचा हात घट्ट पकडूनच हा पूल पार करु शकतो इतकंच कळतं.

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