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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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ATM Contingency Design

Every­body needs to use an ATM at some point. Per­son­ally I would like all money
to be vir­tual, no coins, no paper, noth­ing. Of course there are some rea­sons
to why that’s not the case, but I will not dis­cuss those here. Rather
I will have a look at an ATM machine I recently used and in my opin­ion has some
design issues.

ATM machine 1

The ATM flow has been sim­pli­fied to 7 basic steps. I insert my card, choose
a lan­guage (optional, depend­ing on card), pro­vide the machine with my per­sonal
code, pick an amount that is listed (alter­na­tively I can choose to man­u­ally
input an amount, I left this option out to keep it sim­ple), I decide whether
I want a receipt or not, I with­draw my card and finally I with­draw my money
(important).

The prob­lem I have, as you will soon dis­cover, is with step 5. As such there’s
noth­ing wrong with pro­vid­ing a receipt of course. But I never need one, so I
always hit NO and don’t even think about it. It actu­ally
becomes a chal­lenge to go through all steps as fast as possible—I’m
on autopi­lot and know all the steps by heart.

ATM machine 2

Now the above graphic is exactly the same as the first one, except that step 5 has
changed. The prob­lem is that the machine has no paper left, so you can’t
get a receipt. This hap­pens occas­sion­ally and I can’t really blame the machine. If it’s empty, it’s empty. Besides
I never need a receipt any­way. But I’m on autopi­lot, remem­ber? I’m
accus­tomed to their nor­mal flow. It’s a bit like soft­ware installations—no
one is read­ing the license agree­ment, you just select “I agree”
and hit next.

Not sur­pris­ingly, I don’t actu­ally read the mes­sage and hence don’t
notice it’s actu­ally dif­fer­ent. I hit NO automag­i­cally.
What? The machine spits out my card and aborts the trans­ac­tion.
Uh? So I go through all the steps again and dis­cover the mes­sage
in step 5 has actu­ally changed. So instead I hit YES and get
my money. Duh!

If you’re going to alter the nor­mal flow of an oper­a­tion please let me
know. Make the screen red or some­thing. Just change it from the default design.
It’s not my fault that the machine has no paper left to print out receipts.
Once peo­ple get the gist of a sys­tem they become used to it. If some­thing is
going to change you should bet­ter have a good rea­son for it and clearly indi­cate
to users it’s some­thing dif­fer­ent than they’re used to.

This item was posted by dhilhorst on Saturday, April 3rd, 2004.

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18 comments on “ATM Contingency Design”

  1. Posted by Robb Lee on Saturday, April 3rd, 2004.

    I’ve always won­dered why Step #2 exists. Why does the ATM machine have to ask me what lan­guage I wish to use?

    My bank loves to trum­pet loudly about how much they believe in cus­tomer ser­vice and treat­ing me like a per­son instead of a nameless/faceless trans­ac­tion. In fact, they’ve even devised a cus­tomer ser­vice guar­an­tee. Yet, they still treat me like a com­plete stranger every time I inter­act with their automa­tion technology.

    Were my bank­ing insti­tu­tion sin­cere about their claims of cus­tomer ser­vice, the ques­tion about my lan­guage pref­er­ence would only be asked once–at the time my ATM card was issued. My pref­er­ence would be hard-coded into the mag­netic strip on my ATM card and from that point on, my trans­ac­tions would auto­mat­i­cally default to the lan­guage I chose.

    Of course, there would need to be a way for me to over­ride that default set­ting if nec­es­sary (but I can’t imag­ine one would need to over­ride often, if ever). And, the ques­tion would likely still be asked by “for­eign” ATMs that can­not rec­og­nize that the lan­guage pref­er­ence is hard-coded into my card.

    If a bank wanted to take this con­cept fur­ther, they could build some intel­li­gence into their soft­ware to notice my ATM usage pat­terns and cus­tomize the “fast track” options based on my behav­ior. If my most com­mon behav­ior is to with­drawl $40.00 cash from the machine, it could offer that as the pri­mary option in Step #4 above, fur­ther stream­lin­ing my user expe­ri­ence at the ATM.

    These small usabil­ity issues seem sim­ple and obvi­ous to me. Yet, they could form the basis of a com­pelling adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing cam­paign *demon­strat­ing* a com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice, rather than empty promises and mar­ket­ing hype.

  2. Posted by amanda on Sunday, April 4th, 2004.

    At one point NatWest exper­i­mented with a form of “fast track” screens — if you had the time and incli­na­tion you could set up a few quick options that would be acces­si­ble from one of the open­ing sets of options. I recall set­ting up “£20 and receipt” as one. The prob­lem with this, of course, was that you had to spend time ini­tially set­ting it up, but it was also a fail­ure in that it didnt let you name the options, they were just “option 1″, “option 2″ etc — I could never recall which one was which, and ended up using the nor­mal set of screens instead.

    I tend not to use the same ATMs, and find that there is a lot of vari­ance in the screens used to walk through the process — one of the things that catches me a lot is the “key in your PIN”, some machines require that I key in my PIN *and* press enter, some just the PIN. Some machines require me to chose a lanaguage — oth­ers dont. The posi­tion­ing of the amount options isn’t really stan­dard­ised either. So I’ve given up ever being fast at a cashpoint.

  3. Posted by Mike on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    My biggest prob­lem with ATM machines is that the screen is almost always lower than my head. Usu­ally, at least a foot or so below my field of vision (I’m 6′ tall).

    Now, when I’m look­ing at the screen choices and see­ing which phys­i­cal but­tons they line up with, I have to actu­ally bend over to look at the screen and see which but­tons I should push. The ocu­lar angle changes my per­cep­tion of where the screen choices line up with their phys­i­cal coun­ter­part, and thus forces me to waste my time (and look fool­ish) by squat­ting down so I don’t make a mistake.

    Stu­pid usability ;)

  4. Posted by waylman on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    Mike, I have the very same prob­lem. (I’m 6′ 4″). In fact, just the other day I thought the ATM was stuck at the ‘Do you want a receipt’ screen. I kept push­ing the sec­ond but­ton from the top. It seemed to line up with the desired selec­tion from my point of view. As we can all see in Didier’s graphic above, I should have hit the third from top (I almost always get a receipt). After 4 or 5 tries, I backed up, bent over and real­ized the prob­lem. I then pushed the cor­rect but­ton and every­thing worked fine.

    So why did it take me so many tries to fig­ure out the pro­belm? I got that machine con­fused with an ATM at another bank that is even more anoy­ing (I, like amanda, use many dif­fer­ing machines). This par­tic­u­lar machine is very slow. Every time I make a selec­tion the screen changes imiedi­atly and tells me to wait while it processes my request. Every time, but one! When I tell this machine wheather I want a receipt or not, the screen does not change for 20–30 sec­onds. After about 5 sec­onds I assume I hit the worng but­ton again and make my selec­tion a sec­ond time. I’m cer­tain this makes the process start over and I have to wait the full 30–30 sec­onds from the last time I hit the but­ton. While the wait is annoy­ing, the fact that it is dif­fer­ent from the rest of the sys­tem is even moreso.

  5. Posted by Andy Budd on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    In the UK, my banks ATM’s – which, inci­den­tally, we still call cash machines – go through a slightly dif­fer­ent flow

    1. Insert card

    2. Choose ser­vice. This is usu­ally cash with receipt, cash with­out receipt, bal­ance, state­ment etc

    3. Choose amount. This is usu­ally £10, £20, £50, £100, £200, other

    4. Do you require other services?

    4. Get cash

  6. Posted by Sean Scott on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    Robb, there is a won­der­full rea­son why ATMs should have the abil­ity to dis­play their option in many lan­guages, it’s called tourist. Try tak­ing out cash in Ger­many or Turkey with­out Eng­lish instructions.

    For­tu­nately banks in the US and Italy and i am sure count­less otther coun­tries do pro­vide this ser­vice already. Sure it may not be free check­ing, but it does help.

  7. Posted by Jemal on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    The cor­rect way to present the “No Paper” dia­log is to use the other two side but­tons for yes and no — That way it’ll pull you out of autopi­lot enough to make you read the screen.

  8. Posted by Jennifer Grucza on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    Another tall per­son here (6’2″) who gets annoyed at stoop­ing at the ATM.

    When­ever they have two or more ATMs together, they should put them at dif­fer­ent heights, like they do water foun­tains in stores. One for short peo­ple and peo­ple in wheel­chairs, and one for taller people.

  9. Posted by Richard on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    Off-topic ques­tion: What did you use to cre­ate the ATM graphic? Very nice!

  10. Posted by Didier Hilhorst on Monday, April 5th, 2004.

    Richard — The graphic was made using Adobe Pho­to­shop and Macro­me­dia Fire­works. I work with both appli­ca­tions. I like how Fire­works ren­ders pixel fonts. For other aspects I rely on Pho­to­shop. Both appli­ca­tions have their respec­tive advan­tages, but Pho­to­shop remains the most robust and com­plete piece of soft­ware to cre­ate graphics.

    From the com­ments it seems there’s a whole lot wrong with cur­rent ATM’s (or cash machines), not just the dis­play. I’m still sur­prised how many inter­faces we use on a daily basis, or atleast reg­u­larly, are poorly designed or engineered.

  11. Posted by Peter Eliasson on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004.

    1. About the ‘height’ issue: I’m 6′ 2″ but don’t expe­ri­ence the same prob­lem with ATMs, pos­si­bly because the screen place­ment on swedish ones (that’s where I live) dif­fers from US/UK ones? Over here we get another com­plaint; peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties have trou­ble using our ATM, they’re to high up!

    2 Annoy­ance nobody men­tioned: Why can’t the blasted machine tell me there’s only SEK 500 bills avail­able BEFORE I insert my card? I have to insert card, give code and then be told! Grum­ble, grumble…

  12. Posted by Robb Lee on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004.

    Sean Scott, I don’t take issue with ATM’s offer­ing the user inter­face in dif­fer­ent lan­guages… I think that’s great. And your tourist exam­ple is one of many illus­tra­tions of why a mul­ti­ple lan­guage options are necessary.

    My issue is with the fact that the ATM doesn’t *have* to ask me what my lan­guage pref­er­ence is every time I ini­ti­ate a trans­ac­tion. My lan­guage pref­er­ence could be hard-coded into my ATM card.

    I’m sure there may be sit­u­a­tions where I’d want to inter­act with the machine in, lets say, Por­tugese rather than my default pref­er­ence of Ger­man. But the option to switch to a lan­guage other than my default choice could be on a sen­condary or ter­tiary level… not the pri­mary trans­ac­tion path.

    Of course, any ATM machine that didn’t rec­og­nize the cod­ing on my card would have to resort to ask­ing my lan­guage pref­er­ence, but that would be a minor incon­ve­nience only when I use a “for­eign” ATM (and a poten­tial sell­ing point for my bank–“Whenever you use an ACME branded ATM, you can be sure we’ll know what lan­guage to speak to you”)

    On a related note: I’m 6’1″ and also find myself frus­trated with the ATM screen being too low. How­ever, I fig­ure that’s just a price I pay for being tall. It’s easy for me to crouch down to see the screen prop­erly. It’s much more dif­fi­cult for a dis­abled per­son to increase their height to eas­ily inter­act with a screen ori­ented to some­one of my height.

  13. Posted by Phil Scott on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004.

    The machines that are slowly dri­ving me insane are the ones at gro­cery stores and the such for doing debit / credit card trans­ac­tions. Each one is dif­fer­ent, and each one is poorly done.

    For exam­ple, after typ­ing in your pin num­ber at Tar­get the thing loudly beeps at you and shoots your card out. Which even after 20+ times of using the thing I still panic think­ing that my card is busted or I got my PIN wrong. Nope, the obnox­ious beep is to inform you that your card has been ejected and you should grab it while the trans­ac­tion com­pletes. I guess I’m used to ATMs that hold your card until the trans­ac­tion is done, because it is dis­con­cern­ing to see your card spit out before the trans­ac­tion completes.

    At the Winn-Dixie gro­cery store the but­tons for Ok / Can­cel and Yes / No are shared. Along with four but­tons along the top for mak­ing deci­sions. So you are pre­sented with a screen that looks like this (with top row but­tons “rendered”)

    Would you like cash back? Yes / No

    —-^—^–^–^

    It cer­tainly looks like I could click on a top row but­ton to choose yes or no, but instead if you don’t want cash back you press the CANCEL button.

    At Krogers if you want cash back, the secret is to press No when the thing asks you if the amount listed is cor­rect. The screen says “Is this amount cor­rect?” pauses 5 or 6 sec­onds and then dis­plays “Press No for cashback.”

    Argh.

  14. Posted by Ruben on Thursday, April 8th, 2004.

    I always thought ATM’s in other coun­tries were so smart they could rec­og­nize my for­eign card, because here in the Nether­lands I’ve never seen the screen with step #2 and in the rest of Europe and beyond I usu­ally do get it (except at some local banks).

    I’m on the autopi­lot as well at ATM’s. But the alter­na­tive step #5 (no receipt avail­able) is so com­mon here that I have auto­mat­i­cally adopted my flow to a tiny pause here, just to con­firm the mes­sage on the screen.

    By the way, a few months back I stum­bled upon an ATM that was out of order. But instead of the usual out-of-order mes­sage, I got to see a nice green stan­dard Win­dows desk­top with a few icons. Espe­cially funny was my impulse to look for the mouse to reboot the server.

  15. Posted by Jennifer Grucza on Thursday, April 8th, 2004.

    Speak­ing of pay­ing at the store, why does there have to be a step to choose between credit card and debit? I thought the point of a debit card was that you could use it the exact same way as a credit card.

  16. Posted by Didier Hilhorst on Thursday, April 8th, 2004.

    Another prob­lem I was con­fronted with today: the sun. If the sun shines directly at the ATM screen or it’s a bright day over­all there’s no way you can see what’s hap­pen­ing on the screen. I’m tall too, so I need to make all sorts of weird move­ments and basi­cally have my nose touch­ing the screen to see what to do. But I guess the light issue is a tough one to resolve. Though from the expe­ri­ences I read here we can start a peti­tion request­ing bet­ter ATM machines!

  17. Posted by Jake Walker on Friday, April 9th, 2004.

    In Eng­land, one of the best things ATMs do is require you to grab your card before they spit out the cash. This ensures you don’t leave your card behind. The first time it hap­pens as a for­eigner, you are freaked out (my card didn’t work?!?), but after that you grow to appre­ci­ate this small piece of genius.

    Fleet Bank (now part of Bank of Amer­ica) lets you set lan­guage pref­er­ences one time, and stores them on the card.

    When I go to an ATM, 95% of the time, I with­draw $100 with no receipt. Why not keep track of that and after a few of those with­draws, offer me that with one touch?

  18. Posted by Lebeko on Monday, April 26th, 2004.

    Hi, I am 6′ 3″ and agree with all the other tall users about the but­ton per­cep­tion prob­lem. My spe­cific query is about the ‘con­fir­ma­tion tones’ that ATMS spit out when you enter your PIN. These sound like DTMF tones and can thus be ‘hacked’. What is the ben­e­fit of these tones? Can they be gen­er­ated ran­domly by each ATM?