I have an elderly relative, not the kind of person to easily give in and give up, and who although certainly is not savvy with tech or a digital native, observes, takes notes, and tries to do things herself before admitting defeat.
Regardless of her tenacity, she is ALWAYS defeated by a set of screens that a particular Maltese bank makes a user go through when topping up their Revolut account via this bank’s credit or debit cards.
Each time I help her and remind her what the steps are, I end up honestly feeling sorry for her, because in this instance, technology has disempowered her and makes her feel incredibly frustrated and stupid, every time she needs to repeat this process.
That isn’t what technology is supposed to do.
And this isn’t something we can arrogantly chalk down to ‘stupid user’, because the first time I came to do this myself, it took me a dozen tries, and I know at least 3 other users in my cohort that failed and gave up.
The problem is an illogical, badly designed set of interactions; a truly crap ‘design’.
Don’t let your product be the kind of product that turns people off from using it because it’s unusable and borderline offensive to their intelligence and repeated efforts to use it.
And to put it crudely, for banks in particular, on average, your wealthiest clients are likely your older ones, so you best make sure to serve their needs.
As my colleague here at Systemato Diane says;
“If you don’t pay for User Experience up front when designing your product, you’re gonna pay a UX designer to fix the design blunders later on, when your users fail to adopt your product.”
We fix UX problems like this one, by the way. Get in touch.
