How to Customize Mobile UI and Facilitate User Experience in Identity Checks

The latest Gartner® Market Guide for Identity Proofing and Affirmation,* issued in 2022, highlights the correlation between user experience (UX) and the identity verification process: “Identity proofing may only be considered to be a minor aspect of the overall UX, but a poor identity proofing UX increases customer frustration or abandonment, and reduces an employee’s ability to carry out their role.” That makes sense: if the verification process is long, complicated, and requires lots of effort, a user is more likely to give up.

A well-designed user interface (UI) is among the key factors in a successful user journey. Its logic, usability, speed of response, even the choice of fonts and colors—it all matters and influences the user’s willingness to go on. 

The UI is especially crucial for mobile apps, as they have every chance of becoming the most preferred way to go through identity verification, since smartphones are always on hand. It’s no surprise that mobile developers invest so much into polishing the tiniest interface elements.

When it comes to implementing identity verification in, say, a banking app, it’s rare that a developer prefers to build such capabilities from scratch, since it requires narrowly focused expertise to work properly. Usually, they go for a specialized third-party solution, which may come as a software development kit (SDK). 

The solution of choice typically has its own templates and interface. It wouldn’t be great if all that painstaking work on an app’s UI were set back by integrating a third-party solution.

We at Regula put a high value on UX by making sure that our customers have wide opportunities for seamless integration from the UI point of view. The ability to customize the interface of Regula’s ID verification SDKs helps them provide a consistent and recognizable service that the end user is accustomed to.

Such an approach also supports diversity: one technology can be used in an endless number of applications, and they can all look native.

In identity verification, UI customization is mostly all about the camera view: that same camera that users see in mobile applications when they need to take a picture of their ID. The camera view is usually the only time a user visibly comes across an identity verification solution embedded in an app. That’s because the verification itself—with all its data parsing, checks, and cross-checks—takes place behind the curtain, so the user doesn’t see it.

Our ID verification solution, Regula Document Reader SDK, enables nearly all possible customization scenarios for mobile apps in terms of graphics and text elements. This includes:

→ Adjusting the camera frame. You can change the default frame size, orientation, and color, as well as fine-tune the radii of the corners.

→ Messages. You can add status messages next to the frame (e.g., Searching for a document…) and play with both UX text and fonts as well as the message location.

→ Toolbar. You can modify the panel where the icons are located, for example, by choosing what icons to show or changing the size of the whole panel.

→ Background. It lets you add and tweak the intensity of a background mask (that blurry area around the camera frame) and also add an image within the camera frame.

→ Instructions. You can add animated guidance to help users correctly position their documents within the camera view frame.

→ Indicators. You can assign your brand color to all visual elements and indicators.

There are no restrictions for adding logos, images, messages, and whatever else in the camera view. Moreover, our customers can create their own branded versions of this window, incorporating Regula’s advanced technology with their best UI practices.

All this being said, we understand that some businesses would rather opt for the native interface that comes with an SDK. In this case, Regula provides customers with its own UI that has been proven to ensure usability, so anyone can get a remarkable experience. However, even in this scenario, we leave some space for customization, like changing colors, fonts, sizes, etc.

Another significant issue that influences the overall user experience is language support, also known as localization. If you can use an identity verification solution in your app’s native language right out of the box, that naturally eliminates a serious headache and expedites your time to market. Regula Document Reader SDK supports over 30 major languages spoken in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and North and South America.

Providing customization and localization opportunities for companies and developers is a never-ending process. It evolves in line with customers’ demands and users’ expectations, as well as with the development of new features and technologies. Due to this, online identity verification will be getting more and more convenient, fast, and reliable.

The beneficiaries here are both companies and users: while the former can seamlessly embed Regula ID verification SDK in their current applications or create new ones with minimum friction, the latter can continue to enjoy the familiar services they are fond of without being perplexed by an unusual interface.

*Gartner, Market Guide for Identity Proofing and Affirmation, Akif Khan, 2 March 2022.

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