The problem
Registration and identity verification were one process. A new user could not finish signing up without first passing verification, which put the slowest, highest-friction step of the entire product in front of the very first one. Every prospective account had to clear it before the platform had given them anything at all — and any hesitation at that step was lost before the account existed.
What I changed
The two were separated into independent processes. Registration now stands on its own and completes without verification; verification happens afterwards, inside a window, against an account that already exists.
Most of the work was in the untangling rather than in the new screens. The two concerns had been built as one flow, so their state, validation, and navigation were interleaved, and pulling them apart meant establishing what a registered but unverified account is allowed to be — a state the front end previously had no way to represent. Alongside it I redesigned and refactored the front end of the flows involved.
Result
Verification is no longer a wall in front of registration. A user can create an account and be inside the product, with verification as a step they complete during the window that follows rather than a gate they have to clear to get in.