Communication Gap in Court Hearing Expectations
An ethnographic study of court proceedings and judiciary that I was made a part of circumstantially involuntarily. Instead of being perturbed, I calibrated my compass of context and associated it with my professional domain of User Experience to draw advantage from learning general court proceedings as a life lesson along with devising a scope for innovation in legal tech by first-person participation i.e, ethnographic study that we User Researchers find opportunity rarely.
Recently, an incident happened with me in the vibrant atmosphere of the court that wholly coupled my academic knowledge in Visual Communication and professional knowledge in User Experience for identifying the cavity and the solution. I decided to jog it down in a letter and email it to the accountable authorities.
The email was sent to Confo-pn-wb@nic.in, confonet-info@nic.in, and piyush.goyal@gov.in on 02 March 2023, at 12:24 PM with the subject: Communication Gap due to cavity in Digital and Physical System.
To, The President, District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, 2, 1st Floor, Maya Bhavan, Barrackpur Road, Barasat, N24PGS, Kolkata — 700124 (Near 12 No Rail Gate).
Edaakhil reference no for the lawsuit is A22090004397 and the case no is CC/353/2022.
Hello Everyone,
Unfortunately, a gap in communication is adding to the cost, and time of the consumer court, and causing exasperation for people involved in routine court proceedings. I am contesting the litigation CC/353/2022 as the primary complainant in absence of an advocate on the floor as the amount involved is 669/- only. I’m a UX Principal Consultant. I observe humans, and animals and their interaction with the world. I note down the behavioral, cognitive, ergonomic, and physical challenges w.r.t the context and environment to ponder an appropriate solution (digital and physical) and further validate it by usability testing. I have a B.Sc Degree in Visual Communication thus when confronted with such an obvious communication gap impacting a large number of people registering in the eDaakhil portal and Consumer Court, I decided to reach out to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution to clearly inform about it with appropriate context.
I ‘received and objected’ to a set of documents from OP HDFC ERGO in response to the summon on 17th January 2023. Nobody at that point in time told me that I have to appear with evidence for the next hearing on 01 March 2023. So, I prepared a general bullet point reply document to the OP HDFC ERGO, shared a copy of it with my online advocate, and appeared in court only to find out the format of evidence is inappropriate. I receive routine SMS updates from Confonet dot nic dot in about the next hearing date. A one-liner instruction/expectation (send summon, present evidence, reply to OP, etc) followed by the date of appearance would largely help to bridge communication between the Consumer Court, Complainant, and Advocate of the Complainant. I’d request you get it implemented by the Confonet technology team.
The judge was about to lay a 300/- appearance charge on me which she waived off on considering the ground of a genuine mistake due to a communication gap by the layman complainant, even though there was no way to verify (in the ample of cases she goes through every day) that I had ever been verbally communicated on 17th Jan 2023 about bringing evidence documents for the next hearing. The deficiency in the physical and digital systems is responsible to put me in such a vulnerable situation. So as a UX professional, I decided to inform you about the cavity clearly. Although such cavities should have been routinely found out by the User Research team which is the part of UX team, then implemented by the development team.
I was adamantly sticking to the bullet list reply document that I prepared to submit in response to the documents ‘received and objected’ from OP HDFC ERGO on 17th Jan 2023 whereas a group of Advocates was trying to explain to me the format of the evidence document which as a layman I couldn’t even visualize. It wasted some amount of time for the court proceeding and caused exasperation for people involved in routine court proceedings.
Anyway, to avoid any such communication gap, I asked the judge to pass me the document in which the statements are recorded for the next hearing such that I may take a photograph and forward it to my online advocate to which someone told me that to receive the document I’ve to submit an application to the President. This is a long process. So, I’d also request you designate a staff member to hand over one-liner slips with the next hearing expectations to the complainants competing for their case solely on the floor such that they can take a photograph and pass the exact communication to their online advocates. This will invariably benefit everyone involved in the court proceeding.
The judge also asked me to turn some pages to learn about the general court proceeding. Where can I find a 2–3 pages complainant handbook listing the milestones of typical court proceedings, a glossary of common terminologies, and other necessary details? A youtube mock play of the typical proceedings of the consumer court from beginning to end would be easy to grasp. This way the consumer court will set an expectation for every complainant that is filing the lawsuit and contesting on the floor solely.
The handbook available in eDaakhil portal suggests that there is an arrangement for rapid resolution of e-commerce litigation by a special eCommerce entity. On page 5 it is written that, E-Commerce Entity To Redress, Complaints within one month from the date of receipt. My Insurance Policy Online E-Commerce Transaction case CC/353/2022 is going on since 30th Nov 2022. Can you please transfer it to the E-Commerce Entity for speedy resolution?
Regards,
Ratul Aich
The first in this series is Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility. (Link)
The previous in the series is HDFC ERGO Responded on 17 Jan 2023. (Link)
The next in the series, Replied HDFC ERGO on 30 March 2023. (Link)
