VIA Interaction

Saturday, October 06, 2007

You're not stupid

My ten-year-old daughter got another unwanted user interface lecture yesterday.

They're not always bad. I have waxed poetic about the reasons the ATM machine wants you to take your card back before giving you your money (you will forget the card if it's last; you aren't going to forget the money) and marveled as she worked my iPhone like an expert the first time she laid hands on it.

This one was a bad one though. It was a self-serve checkout at a grocery store in Connecticut. We stopped by to buy one thing - a tween magazine to shelp the kid pass time on a long road trip.

The supermarket had one of those new self checkouts, where you scan your item and enter your card or cash. I've seen the ones at my local Home Depot perform pretty well, but this one, to misquote Randall Jarrell, was designed by a spec sheet for a spec sheet.

There were three key interfaces: The bar code scanner, the credit card swiper and the machine that printed the receipt. Upon entering the aisle, I was first confronted by the credit card swiper, which had a flat panel that said "Swipe your card."

So I did.

I received no feedback from the device. I don't think. I was already flustered, because (as you can see above), my mental model was "1. Scan items. 2. Pay for items with credit card."

Dutifully I went to the scanner, a separate contraption about two feet to the right of the card swiper. I scanned my magazine. It beeped that beep that we all now recognize as "I read the bar code." The scanner asked me if I wanted to pay cash or credit. But I had already entered my credit card?

Although no one was behind me, I felt that moment of panic that accompanies the feeling that you are the stupidest person on the planet.

This is generated by the amygdala with no interference from the rational part of the brain that reminds me I am a user interface designer, that I have been a computer hacker and sometime programmer since I first laid hands on the terminal my dad brought home from work 35 years ago, and that I am a gadget freak.

I canceled the transaction.

There was a store clerk being paid to hover around this set of contraptions to help people escape. She gave me the help I needed (and admittedly would have figured out). Step 1, the card swipe, is actually Step 2. You proceed past the card swipe to the scanner, then go back to the swiper.

My mental model conformed to the functional model. It just didn't conform to the user interface!

The receipt was spit out three feet away from the scanner (about five feet from where you just swiped your card and completed the transaction), and she helpfully pointed it out for me.

I wish I had a picture.

I explained to my daughter that stores are putting these self checkouts in to save the cost of checkout clerks.

She explained to me that that did not do much good if they had to have a clerk there to help you figure it out.

posted by Tim Beidel at 10/06/2007 03:39:00 PM

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