Nusuk — Ministry of Hajj & Umrah

The context

Nusuk is the Saudi Arabian government's unified digital platform for managing the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage — the world's largest annual gathering of people. At peak, over 2 million pilgrims are physically present in Mecca simultaneously; globally, tens of millions interact with the platform to register, get permits, book accommodation, and navigate the physical journey.

I worked as a UX Designer on the Nusuk team from August 2019 to December 2020, embedded within the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah in Riyadh. The platform was undergoing a significant overhaul — moving from legacy government systems to a modern, mobile-first experience.

The problem

The platform served an extraordinary diversity of users: elderly pilgrims from rural Pakistan or West Africa who might be using a smartphone for the first time; tech-savvy users registering for the fourth time; travel agents managing group bookings of hundreds of people simultaneously. All of these users shared one high-stakes context — completing the Hajj is often a once-in-a-lifetime religious obligation, and any failure in the digital journey creates real distress.

Specific pain points we inherited:

• Pilgrim entry and permit verification was entirely paper-based, creating queues of hours at border checkpoints
• The blockchain-based digital identity credential system had a complex, jargon-heavy onboarding that was confusing first-time users and generating enormous support load
• The mobile experience had no offline capability — in a context where network coverage is often poor and high-traffic

Discovery

We couldn't do typical usability testing — we couldn't fly users to a lab. Instead, research was conducted via remote moderated sessions with pilgrims in multiple countries, working with translators for Arabic, Urdu, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hausa. We also embedded with Ministry staff at actual entry points to observe the current paper-based process firsthand.

The most important finding: the majority of errors and confusion happened at two specific moments — the initial credential setup, and the permit verification step at the physical entry point. Everything else was secondary.

Redesigning the entry flow

I led the redesign of the pilgrim entry and check-in flow. The goal was to make the digital credential scannable at checkpoints in under 30 seconds, replacing the paper document that officials had to manually verify against a database.

The new flow produced a dynamic QR code tied to the pilgrim's verified identity, permit status, and accommodation booking — scannable by Ministry officials with a handheld device. For pilgrims, the flow was reduced to a single screen showing their status, next step, and a large, always-visible QR. No navigation required during the high-stress entry moment.

Fixing blockchain onboarding

The blockchain-based identity system was technically sound but the UX was exposing internal implementation detail to users — words like "wallet", "key", "seed phrase", and "ledger" appeared in the onboarding flow. Pilgrims didn't need to know they were using blockchain; they needed to create a secure digital identity.

I redesigned the onboarding using a progressive disclosure approach: just three steps (photo, document scan, biometric verification), with all the blockchain mechanics happening invisibly in the background. The only thing users saw was a green checkmark and their verified identity card.

What I learned

Designing for scale at 40M+ users means you can't optimize for the median user — you have to design for the edges. The elderly first-time pilgrim from rural Indonesia who barely uses a smartphone is your hardest constraint, and if you design for them, you design something that works for everyone.

The blockchain onboarding lesson generalised beyond this project: technical implementation details are almost never relevant to users. Your job as a designer is to translate what the system does into a language of human intent and outcome. "Verify your identity" is the action; the mechanism is irrelevant.