One of my neighbours is approaching 55. The law stipulates that the identity card has to be changed. He encountered problem. He approached me for help and I agreed. I tried to help him as much as possible. I know how taxing a poorly designed web page can be due to past experiences.
We eagerly logged into the web page. I did not know why his scanner enlarged the photo to 1,000% ( who in the right mind would want to scan such a big photo? I suppose it must be for the purpose of catching the crooks in the most wanted list. ) Anyway, we could not find the icon that will lead us to the procedure of the re registration. In the end we had to call for help. The 1st person said we have to call another number for help. We tried but nobody picked up the call. The second person , Inspector Chua, was a very intelligent, kind and patient employee who spent more than 1 hour to help us troubleshoot. We were told we had to click the words "ok thanks" ( How would the user know this is the open sesame magical command?)
Next We have to laboriously try to crop the photo. This part we failed because our file was only in PDF format but jpeg format was required. There were a few times we were unable to do anything due to time out. We had to tediously repeat the login in process. We were supposed to crop the old ic front and back plus the new ic photo. We skipped this step first. After keying in his personal details. We could not proceed any further because his birthday was 30th May which was 20 days away!
Ah ah..............no wonder so many people are stressed in this little red dot!
Please improve on the following
1. Whether my neighbour submit now or 20 days later does it matter? If it does, then ICA should just get him to collect the new ic on or after his birthday.
2. ICA already have records of the old ic so why should the applicant need to re-furnish such redundant records? Isn't this double storage of the same information and a waste of time and resources
3. If for instance the user only has pdf format available then there should be a jpeg converter on that page to resolve this problem.
4. Instead of cropping to reduce the size of the photo, the system should just let the person copy and paste the photo. The pasted photo should just recrop the photo.
5. I hope the URL address will just bring us to the designated website without having to find after keying our ID and password.
Perhaps, the government should appoint me to study the areas of duplication, wastage which I observe in so many areas. Previously I had informed the Bedok Polyclinic to stop printing the 2nd blank page of a patients' invoice showing nothing but the headings.Such wastage was glaring but nobody did anything until I repeatedly harp on the staff.
6. If my neighbour was not yet qualified to apply, shouldn't the system prompt him to apply on his birthday at the start? Please refer to my suggestion on point 1. I hope the website could be improved like at the beginning include the items that are needed 1. Scanned copy of the front and back ic. (This step is totally unnecessary) 2. Scanned new photo the agenda recently. Another feature would be a converter of PDF file to JPEG at the site. I hope someone would check the flaws of the design of websites before they are launched like having on click on "OK thanks" in order to proceed or the lack of consideration of PDF users who did not have the option to choose JPEG file.
Needless to say, my neighbour and I had a fruitless and an exhausted day. All our hard work had gone to waste!