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Five steps towards designing better ID checks

Identity verifications are part of many application journeys. From internet banking to online dating, they make virtual interactions safer for all by ensuring there are real humans behind digital profiles.

Tiina Golub
UX Collective
5 min readFeb 1, 2022

There are many reasons why digital ID checks cause friction: they interrupt the workflow; require elaborate setup, equipment, and skills; force us to reveal our unedited faces on the internet, and make us feel like suspects in a criminal investigation.

While many of these factors are out of our hands, here are five steps that designers can take towards making digital ID checks more user-friendly:

1. Warn users upfront

If your task flow includes an identity check, you should communicate this to the user right at the start of the journey. Give as much detail as possible. Does the user need to have particular documents at hand? Do they need access to a camera and/or a scanner? Will they benefit from being in a quiet, private place? If so, make sure they know this before committing to the process.

Wireframe of an application welcome screen.
Explain what the application process will look like and what users may need before they commit to starting it.

Some designers worry that this will put users off by making the process sound overly complicated. However, playing it down…

Published in UX Collective

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Written by Tiina Golub

Senior product designer at Avantra | Design mentor at ADPList. Passionate about inclusive design, behavioural psychology and minimalism.

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