For applicants, this is a high friction point and was leading to around 50% of users dropping out. This needed to be reduced so we could: Help the user get to their goal of taking a loan out on this platform

We made what is a complex and regulation heavy process into an easy to understand and helpful approach for users.

As the UI designer, I was responsible for the User Interface but above that, I was involved in the UX research too

We first started by researching, a few case studies to see how other banks were approaching the same problem, after that, we consulted with our backend devs, and we understood the technical limitations of the API's we could use to implement the ID upload prototype.

Prototype early, when we did this it allowed us to see the likely areas of failure i.e users needed to have actual illustrations as opposed to images, this would guide them through the process, we also learnt that we needed to provide confirmation in context and acknowledgement of user actions e.g when selecting an image from your gallery we need to acknowledge their selection. these would most probably come in future iterations of the design

In its first week of deployment to production, we saw a decrease in the drop off numbers by 15%, the business also did note that the drop-offs had moved to a further position in the flow, that tells us that we were successful in removing friction at the ID upload phase of the flow

Working in this particular environment, has taught me how to think on my feet, how to tackle problems from a lateral approach and refine as I go, no solution is absolutely perfect at conception, but when it is subjected to thorough testing and probing, it becomes more and more refined.

The team at large, but a special thanks goes to my fellow designers Ndu and Vic who, without which it would have been difficult to bring this to fruition