A large direct-sales company introduced biometric anti-fraud validation for resellers' first in-person credit purchase. It was breaking queues, cancelling orders, and contradicting the brand's hospitality promise. I ran the full research cycle: two months of fieldwork across the whole journey.
The brief I was handed: find out why biometrics is broken.
The brief I shipped: biometrics wasn't the problem. Where and when it happened was.
Context
The company's reseller spaces run on hospitality: the first visit should feel like a gift, not a checkpoint. The anti-fraud logic was sound; the implementation did the opposite, pulling staff off the sales floor.
My Role
The research scope spanned Risk, Fraud, Reseller Platform, Experience, and Operations.
Before: biometrics at the cashier, blocking every order. After: biometrics at store entry, clearing the flow.
Research Approach
Three angles on one journey: as designed, as lived in the store, and as experienced by the reseller.
01
Alignment workshop
Cross-team session to map systems and surface known pain points before fieldwork.
02
Field visits
In-person observation at two store formats.
03
Communication audit
Every staff and reseller material on the process, reviewed; gaps in clarity and timing.
04
Rollout observation
The live launch on July 7: edge cases, system failures, staff behaviour.
05
Online survey
178 WhatsApp messages sent, 27 responses, 3 moved to in-depth interviews.
06
In-depth interviews
Resellers and internal staff, from first store visit to order confirmation.
The survey asked resellers how easy the biometric check was, on a 1-to-5 scale. Nearly everyone rated it 5. Nobody rated it below 3.
Then I asked three of them how it went.
One needed an attendant to walk him through it. One struggled with the face scan, needed her husband's help, and had to take her glasses off. One needed help from another reseller, after trying more than once.
All three had rated it 5.
The step wasn't easy. It just didn't bother them. That's what pointed the research away from the biometric check itself, and toward where and when it happened.
Survey results next to interview notes. Names anonymized.
The central reframe: biometrics wasn't the problem. Running it at the cashier was.
3 Root Areas
Each root area had its own actors, systems, and failure modes.
01. Registration: fragmented flow, no standardisation, staff with no proactive visibility
02. Biometrics: 5–10 min per reseller at the cashier, blocking queues and cancelling orders
03. Communication: staff learning about requirements at payment, not before the reseller arrived
Systems Involved
No single team owned the journey. The flow crossed 12 interconnected systems, each with its own owner, roadmap, and definition of "done."
Recommendations
Prioritised by effort and impact.
A QR code or visual prompt at the entrance starts the process before item selection, while the reseller is still relaxed. This single shift resolves the queues and the cancellation loop, and keeps the hospitality promise without removing any anti-fraud protection.
A status flag on the reseller profile in the store dashboard lets staff see, before the cashier, whether biometrics is done.
Replace text-heavy process updates with visual, step-by-step materials that work digitally and printed. Communicate the requirement before the reseller arrives, not at the cashier.
Online and in-person risk policies were identical, though one context is anonymous and the other supervised. Work with Risk on a separate in-person rule set.
What the Research Changed
I also recommended changing reseller onboarding. The team decided not to touch it in that cycle.
From Findings to Direction
With the UX research team, we built a service blueprint of the full journey. My input: move biometrics into the app, so resellers complete it before arriving at the store. That became the leading direction for the next cycle.
Key Learnings