UX Assessment Programme · Diyana Bancheva

Outcome

A structured assessment programme — six dimensions, one severity model, a standard issue format — that turned 29 findings from PaysafeCard registration across 10 markets into the evidence base for the Phase 1 registration PRD.

Overview

Critical journeys across Skrill and PaysafeCard were underperforming due to UX gaps — friction in onboarding, payments and withdrawals that hit conversion, trust and support cost. As products moved toward more complex, engagement-driven experiences, the core journeys were not consistent or strong enough to carry that ambition.

I led the UX Quality / Assessment programme as an execution system: shared framework, severity model, scoring guide and journey deep-dives, so findings could be prioritised against business impact rather than stuck as opinion. The framing was deliberate: from ad-hoc UX fixes to a structured, prioritised, trackable system embedded in the product lifecycle.

Registration is the first product experience every new customer has, and our highest-volume entry point.

The problem

Business impact showed up as revenue leakage in high-value journeys, higher operational and support costs, reduced trust and repeat usage, and slower product evolution. On PaysafeCard registration alone: fewer than half of the people who started completed it, and most of the drop-off happened in the first three steps: country selection, email and mobile verification.

P2P was equally trust-critical: people sending money needed to understand fees, timing and what happens if something goes wrong.

What we were solving

Improve conversion in key flows — reduce friction in onboarding, payments and withdrawals.
Improve clarity and reduce errors — users understand what is happening and what to do next.
Reduce support-driven UX issues — eliminate confusion and avoidable mistakes.
Increase consistency across journeys — align patterns and behaviours across products.

Assessment framework: six dimensions

Every journey was evaluated against six dimensions (usability, trust & transparency, content & tone, product & business impact, behavioural fit, scalability & growth readiness), tied to business performance: not only how the product works today, but how well it supports future growth:

Usability: clarity, cognitive load, feedback and error handling. Can users complete tasks quickly and confidently?
Trust & transparency: fees, limits, status, confirmation. Do users feel in control when handling money?
Content & tone: clear, actionable copy matched to transactional vs engagement context.
Product & business impact: conversion friction, CTA hierarchy, drop-offs and blockers.
Behavioural fit: support for fast, momentum-driven actions for players and gamers who want speed; reassurance and control.
Scalability & growth readiness: can the experience evolve toward richer, destination-based product ambition?

Severity model

Critical: blocks task completion, creates compliance risk, or causes failed transactions / lockouts.
High: directly impacts conversion or trust; frequent errors or drop-offs in key flows.
Medium: noticeable friction; slows completion without blocking success.
Low: polish and consistency; no direct conversion impact.

Each issue used a standard format (heuristic, type, issue, suggestion), so findings were reviewable, assignable and trackable into delivery.

Field definitions used to classify every issue: six issue types (visual and UI design, content and tone, technical and performance, interaction design, navigation and information architecture, usability), and thirteen journey areas from onboarding to offboarding. — The field definitions behind the format: every issue was tagged with a type and the journey area where it was experienced.

What we assessed first

Prioritisation used user frequency, revenue impact, trust/compliance risk and strategic importance. Highest-impact journeys first:

PaysafeCard

P2P / Instant Gifting · Onboarding & KYC · Authentication & recovery · Voucher purchase · Checkout / payment confirmation.

Skrill

Authentication & recovery · Onboarding & KYC · Add money / auto deposits · Withdraw / paying online · Send / transfer / receive.

Onboarding & registration: deep dive

End-to-end usability, trust, error prevention and completion across registration. Early steps — country select, email and mobile verification — carried most of the drop-off. Every friction point in registration raised acquisition cost. A separate KYC / Auth & Recovery assessment added 24 findings (4 critical) on the same severity model.

User journey map of the seven PaysafeCard registration steps, from country selection to account created, showing what users think and feel at each step and the business risk it creates. Frustration and abandonment risk peak at personal details, address and mobile verification. — Where confidence drops across the seven registration steps — from country select through to account created.

29issues · five critical
10 marketscovered by the registration assessment

Biggest risk themes: verification failures, phone validation and recovery paths, with five issues rated critical. Opportunities: reduce abandonment and support contacts, improve completion and trust.

P2P and send money: deep dive

Trust, transparency, usability and transaction confidence across send-money. Recurring patterns included:

Constraints revealed too late in the journey — limits or eligibility only surfaced after the user had already started sending.
Incomplete summary before confirmation — amount and parties visible, but not a full pre-commit view of fees, timing or final amounts.
Unclear pending and recovery states — holds, next steps and what to do when something stalled were hard to follow.

The pending-state findings turned into design work. The team mapped every state for both sides of a transfer, sender and recipient: pending, not received, declined or expired, and cancelled. The proposals went onto the roadmap and the fixes were delivered in August and September 2026.

Proposed PaysafeCard send-money states from the P2P assessment, shown for the sender and the recipient: confirming a transfer to an unverified account, pending, not received, declined or expired, and cancelled, each with its screens and notifications. — From finding to fix: the proposed states for sender and recipient, later delivered in August and September 2026.

How the system worked

01
Collect
Bring the evidence together

Combine heuristic reviews, Voice of Customer, usability testing, analytics and behavioural data into one evidence base.
02
Analyse
Find patterns, not isolated issues

Look across individual findings for recurring friction, root causes and areas where customers repeatedly struggle.
03
Prioritise
Rank by consequence

Assess severity, customer impact, business impact and effort to identify where attention should go first.
04
Recommend
Turn evidence into direction

Translate findings into actionable product and design recommendations rather than leaving them as disconnected UX observations.
05
Validate
Check whether the problem changed

Use customer testing and product data to understand whether proposed improvements address the underlying problem.
06
Track & evolve
Keep quality connected to the roadmap

Bring new evidence back into the assessment so prioritisation evolves with the product rather than ending with a one-time audit.

The system was deliberately cyclical: evidence should continue to influence decisions after the first review, not disappear once recommendations are handed over.

Execution model

Prioritise from roadmap, data and risk.
Audit Figma + live product across all six dimensions, with drop-off, error and support signals.
Document issues in the standard format.
Score severity against business impact.
Align with Product & Engineering — backlog, ownership, capacity.
Solution design & validation against DS and accessibility.
Deliver and track with KPIs per journey.
Re-validate after implementation.

How success is measured

Impact, not activity: KPIs defined per journey goal.

Activation: sign-up → dashboard conversion; KYC completion.
Monetisation: payment success; deposit conversion.
Trust: withdrawal success; time to receive funds.
Access: login and recovery success.
Experience: drop-off per step, errors, time-to-complete, task success.
Operational: fewer UX inconsistencies and UX-driven support tickets; faster time to market.

Evidence mix

VoC from app and web reviews; ops feedback for eCash and digital wallet.
Mobile usability tests on first-time and high-frequency tasks: onboarding & login, home navigation, payments & card flows.
Heuristic evaluation, error/edge assessment, content review, localisation checks.

Outcomes

A living UX Assessment programme — framework, severity model, scoring guide and governance — rather than a static report.
Prioritised finding sets for Onboarding and P2P with critical/high severity called out for roadmap intake.
Shared evidence base (VoC + UT + ops) that product, design and leadership could use in the same conversation.
Direct input into the Q1–Q3 consumer UX roadmap I led with a team of up to eight, with Q3–Q4 planned to scale into a recurring cycle.

Reflection

The value was making quality inspectable: same bar, same severity language, same path into prioritisation.