No clues, just money

An article by Pedro Sampaio    No Comments

Please remove your card

I’m not the kind of person to carry much money in my wallet. I usually depend on debit or credit cards for most of my transactions. But while this is much more convenient for me, it sometimes is a nuisance, like the one that happened just a couple of days ago.

I was having dinner at a local restaurant, and when we finished the meal, we proceeded to pay with the debit card. The waitress keys in the value, “Please press OK, then your code, and then OK once again. And so I did: ” OK … #### … OK”. After a couple of minutes later, the answer comes: “Please remove your card”. No receipt, no error message, nothing. Just “Please remove your card”. Figuring there was something wrong with the communication, we tried again. “OK … #### … OK”.  And again, the result was the same: “Please remove your card”.

Without any other clues to what was going on, we decided that the card was the culprit, and tried another time with a different card from a different bank. This time, it was even worse, as there was no message displayed, not even asking to remove the card.

No paper, what else?

After all these unsuccessful attempts, the waitress called another waitress that was passing by and asked her if she could help. She thought of the obvious (it’s always obvious looking back): “Have you checked if the machine has paper?” Well, of course it didn’t. Just as soon as she opened the machine, we all noticed the empty cardboard roll. Now, it’s true that the waitress that used it the last time when the paper ended could have changed it, but this is clearly an User Experience problem.

The main issue here is that the portable payment terminal gives insufficient information regarding this error (and eventually even gives no information at all). This could be corrected with a simple message stating the actual problem: “Unable to print receipt. No paper.” This would be enough for someone using the machine to at least understand what’s going on.

But we could go even further. When you’re starting a transaction, the machine could preemptively warn the user that it’s not possible to proceed with it. At the very least, if the user is still allowed to carry on with the transaction, keep him informed about what will happen: “Unable to print receipt. Do you want to continue with the transaction?” This way, the user is able to make an informed decision.

Finally, how hard would it be to include a small blinking light, signaling that there is not paper?

Bottom line

Sometimes we don’t really think about the objects that surrounds us, and how they impact our lives every day. It takes a lot of time to get the interaction with these objects just right, and with a little effort, we can actually make them enjoyable. This is the purpose of User Experience.

Oh, and I did get charged 3 times, so I had to go to an ATM, get the last transactions in my accounts and take it back to the restaurant so they could refund me.