User Interfaces
So I’m at the grocery store. And I tend to pay everything with plastic. I pay off every month, and don’t keep a balance. Plastic just makes it easier for me to track my expenses (and I don’t have to worry about cash or change). Anyways, at the end of the checkout procedure, you play with the little kiosk/card swiper thing.
You select credit card, you swipe, you wait for the cashier. Or wait, do you just swipe? Where is the credit card button? Do you need to confirm the charge? By pushing ‘YES’? or by pushing ‘Enter’? or the green button? what about that softkey underneath the LCD?
I am amazed that such a common and popular interface is so poorly designed. Millions of people probably use it daily. Yet there isn’t a standard interface, and they seemed to be flawed.
I think the big problem with the machines (at least for me) is the use of conflicting metaphors. When confirming something do you choose ‘YES’, ‘Enter’, or the green button? Obviously the solution would be to remove the conflicting metaphors. A LCD touchscreen with virtual buttons could be a solution. When entering your PIN, you’re given a virtual touchpad, ‘Enter’, ‘Backspace’, and a ‘Cancel’. When confirming, you’re given a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’. Problems with it are that dynamic interfaces are usually frowned upon, and touchscreens just get nasty. Ideally everything could be done with physical keys. Perhaps marking the key in question as ‘Enter/Yes’. I dunno. The multi-label would probably cause some confusion as well. I suppose I could mock something up and play with it, but I’m not nearly that motivated (and really wouldn’t do me any good).
Ultimately it’s not as easy as it first looks, but I can’t believe this is the best we’ve got for now. Obviously some supermarkets use better ones with better interfaces than others. It’s funny that I would prefer not to deal with UI as a programmer.