I was trying to access my profile within the iMobile Pay application but got an error saying ‘You are not authorized to do this transaction as your grid card validation was not completed. Please reactivate and complete grid validation.’
Neither my relationship manager at the bank nor ICICI was helpful so here’s the solution:
1) Log out of your iMobile Pay application
2) Tap ‘Forgot PIN’
3) Try Logging in again
4) Send SMS
5) The app will prompt you to choose to activate via Debit Card Grid
6) Done
You should now be able to access the entire application again.
What went wrong here?
Throwing an error is good but also provide the user with a quick way to recover from the error! (Nielsen’s Usability Heuristic #9: Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors)
In this case, the way the user can recover from their error is to complete grid validation. So provide them with an immediate way to do that and don’t just leave them in the lurch to figure out how to do it. One potential solve could be that the options on the error dialog could have been ‘VALIDATE GRID / DO IT LATER’ instead of just ‘OK’.
But there are other solves too. Given that I was barely able to do anything without having validated the grid, this is a serious action. Displaying a persistent message on the home-screen could have been a viable option too.
Both the above solutions are after the user faced the issue. Better yet would be to identify how a user landed in this situation and prevent that. I re-downloaded the ICICI mobile app yesterday and when I logged in there, it didn’t ask me to validate the grid. Otherwise, I probably would have. So identify and fix that leaky flow.
Downstream effects of this bug
A 2 minute call to the ICICI helpline.
A 3 minute call to my relationship manager.
A 17 minute call to the ICICI helpline.
What’s funny is that the ICICI helpline has some new IVR system in place, presumably in an effort to decrease the number of calls that go to human support.
Previously when you called it up, it would read out the list of options and you selected the corresponding number “1. Banking 2. Credit Card 3. Account Statement” instead now it directly goes “Describe your issue in a few words” and transcribes your audio and tries to connect you to the correct options.
Good in theory but awful in practice because this is how the call went.
“Describe your issue in a few words”
“I’m facing an issue logging into my IMobile Pay app because of a failed grid card validation”
“Describe your issue in FEW words”
“Grid Card Validation”
“Alright. Please tell me what this is related to 1. Banking 2. Credit Card 3. Account Statement”
“1. Banking”
“Alright. Please describe your issue in few words”
“Grid Card Validation”
“I was unable to find a correct match. Please wait while I read out the menu to you:”
and then it reads out the menu and then after a few more minutes, I was finally able to reach a human.. who wasn’t able to solve my issue.
Sigh.
I last faced this bug in Jul 2023, it is now Jun 2024 and it’s still there.
Why?
The thing is, it can be due to any of several reasons.
Maybe when designing the SMS flow, the designer/PM did not put in enough thought into covering all the edge cases. This is just lack of care.
Maybe when this flow was being developed , the engineer wasn’t thorough enough to cover all the edge cases.
Maybe this issue cropped up due to a separate change that someone else made.
Fine, whatever. This issue now exists. Why hasn’t it been fixed yet?
Maybe since there’s a way that the customer can unblock themselves, this bug is not a high priority fix.
Maybe none of the fixes I suggested above are viable due to ‘technical limitations’ or how the app is currently structured
Maybe there are too many possible solutions and the designer/PM can’t figure out which one to go ahead with and the tradeoffs are fuzzy
Maybe nobody even realizes that this is a bug and hasn’t logged it yet.
Maybe the bugs board is already over-flowing with hundreds of other bugs and this is a P3.
Maybe the engineer who was assigned this bug has other competing priorities.
I’m not just calling out ICICI here. Quizizz also had many such bugs.
My experience in every company I’ve been at so far is that people only really fix bugs when they become painful. In the meantime, users just have to live with a million paper cuts each day.
I hope the next place I work at cares about these paper cuts.
My ideal job title might just be ‘Papercut Doctor’