Keep Your Customers
As someone whose world would readily blur into pixel art rendition without nearest-neighbor scaling the moment the glasses slip from the bridge of their nose, my eternal nemesis is 'modern' online KYC (Know Your Customers) procedures routinely employed in financial apps. Doing anything in my banking apps seemingly involve some kind of selfie recordings with bizarre instructions written in tiny fonts while they insist on REMOVING my glasses. Instructions I could NOT read without squinting, but they want me to open my eyes too. Every single time my dignity is reduced to jumping around in my room like a one-man circus show until one of us, me or the app, gives up.
If I could somehow overcome the instruction problem, some apps refuse to complete verification unless I have the perfect even lighting and perfectly smooth even-coloured background. Do you know how difficult it is? Sunlight filters through the windows in patches, my indoor lightings cast odd shadows on the floor, and I can't have one empty wall because I do not own this place and the furnitures inside. How many of you have a good studio space at home?
Every other month I lock a certain amount of money in 1-month deposit. Usually I just have to input the amount and punch in my PIN and that's it. This month I have discovered that I have to do the KYC dance for said 1-month deposit. Predictably, I failed the verification 10 times in a row and the app refused to let me do more. So be it. I get why the procedure is important, I get that face ID with glasses is difficult (especially since our national ID is taken without glasses), but surely there is a room for alternatives?
I suppose the best way to handle this is to ask for help from a friend, let them hold the phone and read the instructions out loud while I act out whatever is asked for. However, as I live alone, it's not a practical suggestion most of the time (I usually do my business on weekdays, and my friends...have lives on their own on weekdays). Sometimes, I wonder if the developers conduct usability tests at all.
At least make the fonts bigger, dammit.