How Students Tackle Business Challenges with Fresh Ideas

From March 20 to 24, it was again «Innovation Crunch Time». During this event, students with different backgrounds from HEIG-VD and the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard had to tackle a challenge given to them by a company. Within 5 days they had to come up with an innovative solution.

One challenge, proposed by Adnovum, was entitled «How to make the Swiss e-ID a success story».

To solve a problem, you must understand it

The students focused on the social aspect of the Swiss e-ID, aiming to see how it can be accepted by Swiss citizens and integrated into Swiss culture.

The team, consisting of 5 students, started by reformulating the problem to their understanding:

«How can we raise awareness among Swiss citizens, taking into account their fears of new technologies and, at the same time, emphasizing privacy aspects? Plus, how can we demonstrate the benefits of using a digital wallet containing an e-ID?»

From the wealth of ideas they initially collected, the students kept the following ones:

• Organize several public awareness campaigns targeting different age groups:
  • Under 30 years old – the campaign is run on social media and emphasizes the benefits of the e-ID, like fast official procedures and integrations.
  • From 30 to 60 years old – the campaign uses more official channels like government supported television and official government announcements. It focuses on explaining how the e-ID works and how it protects the privacy of individuals.
  • Above 60 years old – the campaign is spread over the preferred news channels of this target group, i.e. newspapers and the radio. It addresses in particular the fears associated with technological changes and confirms that the physical ID card can still be used.

• Propose trainings and assistance for the different age groups.

Convincing users by looking through their eyes

In a next step, the students thought of specific features for the mobile wallet that would promote the adoption of the e-ID by Swiss people. This is what they came up with:

e-Documents: Besides the e-ID, Swiss citizens can visualize and centralize their official papers (scanned or digital files) in this feature. E-documents cannot only be stored, but can also contain direct links to services that provide official documents (e.g. extract from the debt collection register). 

e-Vote: The students imagined that voting could also be integrated into the application to provide every citizen with an easy and faster way to vote, without having to physically go to a post or municipal office.

Backup: As part of their findings and validated by the draft of the e-ID law, the team proposed an integrated backup functionality.

Translation: To spice up the application with a Swiss culture functionality, similar to how the Estonian e-ID gained popularity, the students proposed a translation service. The service would translate from and to any of the official Swiss languages, plus English for visitors or for internationalization.

When the team asked other students about their perception of the e-ID, it was faced with a lot of reserved behaviors. By openly discussing the students’ concerns, the team was able to convince them of the practicality and the benefits of the e-ID. One key argument was that the e-ID enables short and painless official procedures.

Why innovation is more than a buzzword

Thanks to events like «Innovation Crunch Time», the pioneers of tomorrow help companies shape the digital future: by focusing on people, getting hands-on and thinking outside the box.

Committed to fostering innovation, we at Adnovum realized that the public success and acceptance of the e-ID cannot be taken for granted. Making the Swiss e-ID part of the Swiss culture requires the perfect blend of creativity, fresh ideas and an open mind.