Skip to main content

Ordering Hell

Recently, at a gas station convenience store where I had stepped to get some regular coffee, I found myself terminally confused. For speed and convenience they have ordering stations with touch-screens that should presumably let you print out a ticket for your order and in a couple of minutes you would be on your way without needing to talk to anyone. The navigation felt like a crossword puzzle without any clues. 

My friend A and I stood pecking at the screen trying to order two small coffees and a small box of doughnut holes. Fortunately for us, the place was relatively empty so our incompetence was not being publicly broadcast. We were not holding up the progress of the nation as we struggled very hard at such a simple task. After a good fifteen minutes we managed to get our order number. When we went to collect it, mine turned out to be steamed milk not coffee at all. The woman at the counter gave me a withering look when I described my problem and asked me to go add some coffee to the milk that I had actually ordered.

The experience made me wonder about usability and human factors testing, This is not the first time that I have been completely stumped by a touch-screen interface driven by an abundance of visuals. Each that time that has happened, I have sneaked a peek at how others around me are faring with their orders. Generally, no one is zipping through the process though some may be doing better than me. There is something isolating and deflating about the experience. No one is asking another stranger to help them so we all struggle along alone. 

The large number of visual cues meant to help with navigation create this subliminal suggestion that the system was designed for the lowest common denominator. If you have a pulse you should be able to figure it out. And yet many of us don't. A and I joked about it as we failed together. If I was alone there, it would have not been as funny. There has to be a way to help most of us order coffee and doughnuts by way of touch screen. We are all using elevators, driving cars, checking our email, throwing out the trash, riding public transportation - without requiring assistance. So it must be possible.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...