Google’s blog today talks about World Usability Day. One of the examples they cite is ATM design.

Bank of America has run a series of commercials talking about how their advanced ATMs will be able to count cash deposits and put it directly in your account or scan deposited checks and print a copy of them on your receipt.

I’d be thrilled with basic usability enhancements.

Almost every time I use an ATM, I’m asked the same questions:

• What language do I want? (English)
• What do I want to do? (Withdraw, of course)
• How much do I want? (95% of the time, it’s the same amount.)
• Do I want a reciept? (Yes.)

Two of those answers won’t change. I won’t suddenly start trying to get money in Spanish or Japanese. And I will always want a receipt. These could be preference settings.

As to how much I want to withdraw, it’d be great if there were a quick pick option on the early screens that let me do 1-click for my most frequent task.

And when I do need to manually enter an amount, don’t make me enter the cents. After all, the machine can’t give me $200.32, can it?