Redesigning public services
for 6.8 million people

Background

A region trying to become
Europe's digital benchmark.

Madrid Digital is the agency responsible for the digital transformation of the Comunidad de Madrid — one of Spain's largest regional administrations, serving over 6.8 million people across healthcare, education, housing, employment, and more.8 million people across healthcare, education, housing, employment, and more.

The challenge was not just visual. Citizens were navigating a fragmented landscape of outdated services, inconsistent interfaces, and bureaucratic friction. The redesign had to be technically feasible and genuinely usable for a population with vastly different digital literacy levels.

Cuenta Digital — onboarding

From registration to
personalised citizen space.

The onboarding flow was one of the most critical UX challenges — connecting citizens to their digital identity (IDentifica), setting up their personalised space, and surfacing relevant services immediately. The design had to work for first-time digital users as well as experienced ones.

UX process

Research across the full chain —
citizens, civil servants, and managers.

The redesign was grounded in research conducted at every level of the administration — from front-line civil servants processing daily requests, to technical teams managing back-end workflows, to department heads defining service requirements. Understanding the full chain was essential: a citizen-facing improvement that creates friction for the gestores managing it isn't a real improvement.

Research sessions included structured interviews with funcionarios, técnicos, and jefes de servicio across multiple departments. Each group had different pain points, different technical constraints, and different definitions of what "working" looked like — reconciling those perspectives into a single coherent design direction was the core design challenge.

UX process — forms & document submission

Redesigning the forms citizens
and gestores use every day.

Existing forms had accumulated years of legacy requirements — mandatory fields that no longer served a purpose, document upload flows with unclear error states, and step structures that didn't match how users actually approached the task. The redesign was a systematic audit and rebuild of the existing form library, not a visual refresh.

Key changes across the form system:

UX process — notifications & resolutions

Closing the loop between
administration and citizen.

One of the most consistent findings across all research sessions — with citizens and gestores alike — was the breakdown in communication at critical moments: when a procedure was received, when additional documentation was needed, and when a resolution had been issued. Citizens had no visibility into where their request stood. Gestores had no reliable way to reach them.

The notification system was redesigned end-to-end, covering both the citizen experience in Cuenta Digital and the tools gestores use to trigger and manage communications:

Featured service redesign

Carnet Joven — from physical card
to integrated digital service.

Among the 220+ services redesigned, the Carnet Joven digitisation stands out as a case study within the case study. It required rethinking not just an interface, but an entire service model — translating a physical card with 30+ years of history into a native digital experience integrated within Cuenta Digital.

Carnet Joven — 4 journeys redesigned

From office visit
to one tap in the app.

Outcomes

A digital administration
citizens actually use.