Yes, it really could be a lot more user friendly. The instructions are incomplete, there is no way to resubmit a document you've already submitted, the size limits and required file formats are limited and limiting, and the algorithmically driven accept/reject of certain required information is finicky at best.

Like another poster mentioned, combining PDFs on a Mac is quite easy using built-in applications, and so in the end most of my time was spent moving pages around among PDFs that I created by scanning (passport, documents, etc). Then the biggest issue is that the PDF sizes can easily end up being too large. I eventually got around that by changing my scanner software to output 1-bit b/w PDFs, vs. the 24-bit RGB it was configured for. That dramatically shrunk the PDF sizes. I also removed a few pages I thought were irrelevant, from certain documents.

Hang in there. My application was for a more complicated visa than yours, but it was approved on my first attempt. That was late March 2023, on the 11th business day after submitting, submitted to the LA consulate.