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?
Funny how much we just use things without thinking about them. Way to think outside the box.