As part of the process of bringing the Onfido tool into the Barclays retail credit onboarding journey, senior leadership required discovery into customer perception of using a 3rd party tool for identify verification.

Objective

• Understand user perceptions and comfort around using the Onfido tool
• Identify the best position for the ID check within the credit onboarding journey
• Test the usability of the complete end to end process onboarding journey.
• General validation of the re-designed look & feel.

Process

• Semi-structured interview to uncover customers prior experiences with retail credit onboarding journeys.
• Usability testing a short prototype emulating the start of the in store credit onboarding journey, followed by a test version of the Onfido app to emulate the browser Onfido experience.
• Follow questions to further explore user perceptions and comfort with using Onfido

Challenges

• Recruitment required a set of very specific eligibility requirements - the same required to take out retail credit - as well as a past experience with retail credit agreements.
• Participants needed to be put at particular ease that their personal details (face images and ID documents) were not recorded or stored as part of the research.
• This study was part of a initiative I led to utilise unused office space in bank branches to conduct interviews. As such this study also involved overcoming some logistical and technical challenges in regards to setting up research at this location.

Analysis

• Following the completion of the 8 semi-structured interviews I engaged in a detailed analysis of the results.
• Insights were identified and collated, before being categorised and then printed to engaged in a thematic coding exercise in collaboration with the UX and UI designers.
• This was both an analysis exercise, but also a way to get UX/UI more involved in research and make them feel part of the process of identifying insights.
• The results of this exercise formed the basis of the research write-up which I produced and the insight wall remained in our team breakout space through development to ensure design was being insight-led.

Outcomes

• The outcomes from the research helped direct the development of the onboarding journey by identifying as what points customers were most comfortable undergoing identity checks. We identified an appropriate point in the journey that balanced gathering sufficient information for an identity check, with customer convenience - so that customers weren't going through a lengthy onboarding journey only to be denied for failing an ID check.
• Additionally, the research uncovered customer sentiment towards a 3rd party onboarding tool, and established an important understanding of how customers tie their trust of the bank as an institution and the 3rd parties which the bank chooses to do business with.
• Finally, the research helped establish how customers were willing to utilise the 3rd party Onfido tool and where the boundaries lay. In that we discovered that customers had a strong preference for using the tool on their own device, rather than one owned by a retailer.

Overall this research was very successful and became a key signpost in the future development of the new credit onboarding journey. Not only did it help validate the UX journey it also put at ease many key senior stakeholders who had reservations about using a 3rd party tool for ID verification. The results of the work presented here helped them to understand that customers were happy with the direction the product team was pursuing.