Neighborhood notes
1. A beautifully well-trained dog has moved in along Hoffman. He's off the leash, sniffing around the yard, peeing, doing all the usual dog things. When he sees a walker on the street, he instantly trots back to the porch and sits quietly and stiffly like a guardian lion statue until the walker is past. Military precision. The owner is not outside, so the dog is performing this wonderful routine without cues or orders. He looks proud to be defending the house, and it's a well-deserved pride.

2. A poorly-trained ATM has moved into Shadle. Terrible software. You insert your card as usual and go through the various steps as usual. The steps take longer because each involves a GIFfy animation instead of a straightforward menu. At the end the machine DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY EJECT YOUR CARD. The card is still fully inside the holder, not protruding. You can't grab it. The machine pops up a pair of choices: Return Card or Another Transaction. There's no beep or warning. If you don't notice the pair of choices, you're going to walk off and leave your card in the machine. And then what happens?

THE NEXT USER CAN CLAIM YOUR CARD by selecting Return Card. In fact the next user HAS TO claim your card before he can do anything with his own card. At that moment he has effectively stolen a card without meaning to. The machine has turned him into a criminal.

This is CRIMINALLY BAD UI/UX.

= = = = =

Update two years later: Sure enough, it happened. I was feeling ill and dim, so took the taxi to the store instead of bus+walk as usual. In a hurry to avoid taxi wait fees, I used the ATM and forgot to push the button to return the card. Fortunately I got a larger stack of money than usual, so won't run short before the replacement is mailed. ... Looking it up, apparently ATMs will simply suck in and destroy a card when you don't tell it to return. So the card wouldn't have been stolen and misused, but still needed to be replaced.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 8:28 AM