When situation trumps procedure
The new self-checkout machines are all the rage at my neighbourhood Tesco. As in any sensible initiative to replace people with computers, Tesco tripled its human staff load for the occasion. Extra personnel scurry about to iron out kinks and liaise between customer and machine.
Kinks occur because the people at the till or cash register can do much more than follow procedures but self-checkout machines only follow procedures.
Take this procedure:
1. price an item
2. throw it in a bag
And take this situation:
I (driven by early-morning munchies so powerful that I forgot that I am too discriminating to buy croissants from Tesco) put two croissants in a single plastic bag. Since one had pecans in it and the other didn’t, they had different prices. I might have put each in a separate bag but I’m with Ben Bradshaw. (props to Mlle. dron)
At checkout time, the machine asked me to press the button which depicted my product and to indicate how many I wanted. The machine lost its grip on my experience after I priced the first croissant but placed both (since they were in the same bag) on the adjacent scale. After pricing the second, the machine told me to put it on the scale. This request wasn’t coherent because the croissant was there already.
Tesco’s human assistants could see that all was kosher but the machine was in a huff. The weight of my grocery pile had to increase in order for us to move forward. Muddling through, I tossed my keys on the scale. The machine was appeased and a Tesco staff member sanctioned the manoeuvre with a nod.
Still, the case of the mediocre croissant purchase raises a chilling truth: good user experience can’t be specified in a procedure. Users are quirky pecans. Their unaccountable tastes and hang-ups lead to scenarios that we could never anticipate much less optimise in advance. Designing an experience demands an eye to procedure but also a readiness to dive into action – in the midst of the experience - with wily workarounds and situation-specific solutions.
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Comment by MK
(Warning - long and not very interesting story.)
The self-service checkout machines are a bit inflexible and dumb, as you note. (Clever use of the keys to get out of that frustrating situation, by the way.) However, I came upon an interesting side effect of dealing with a machine rather than a human the other day at Tesco: I hastily grabbed a package of cooked chicken, and when I scanned it at the self-service machine, was horrified at the price for such a small package - turned out I had grabbed the deluxe, corn-fed, super-duper chicken, when I had meant to grab the middle-of-the-road range. I cancelled the whole thing and went back for the sort I meant to get. Now, if I had been with a human cashier, I’m not sure I would have stopped or paused the whole thing and said “Wait a sec, that’s not the chicken I wanted, let’s forget this whole thing, I’m going to go back and investigate the chicken situation”. I probably would have thought “Holy moley, 5 quid for a lousy packet of cooked chicken!” as the clerk scanned it and just sucked it up. Because no one wants to look like a cheapskate, or hold up the queue, or appear insane, right? Maybe that’s just me. Anyways, the machine didn’t judge me for rejecting Tesco’s Finest Organic Hand-Fed Honey Glazed Lovingly Inspected Chicken Parts for the Tesco Ordinary Chicken Parts Inspected by Robots. And for that reason, I have come to terms with the machines at Tesco that I previously disliked.
Posted on January 6, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Comment by maya
RESPEC to the machine for not being snotty about the inadvertent Überchicken choice or about my mediocre croissants.
This is all the more reason to enrich the self-check interaction rather than be complacent about it. I demand to know why MK should have to “come to terms with” her experience. Why should she not relish that experience?!
For brave spirits who care about optimising user experience in actual situations - after the product release date, where design documents are nowhere in sight but chicken, croissants and ingenuity reign supreme - I strenuously suggest these bits of further reading:
» Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication
by Lucy A. Suchman
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521337397
» Where The Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction
by Paul Dourish
http://www.dourish.com/embodied/
add your picks…
Posted on January 7, 2007 at 9:18 am
Comment by Will
Ah, that\’s progress for you - very soon we\’ll be able to work, rest, play and shop -
all without leaving our own home! Won\’t it be great?
I had a similar experience with these machines in Marks & Spencers yesterday
afternoon, where I was attempting to purchase a tub of overpackaged coriander and
two overpriced chicken fillets (that were, according to the picture, raised in
paradise). The procedure was mechanical, rapid and disappointingly uneventful.
Unlike my previous, farcical experience which ended in complete hysterics for myself
and a large portion of the Tesco\’s staff, followed by a shame that made me want to
scream my geek credentials. It\’s interesting how people will still attempt
conversation with machines in times of techno difficulties, despite the obvious
futility (not that that\’s any excuse for my Faulty Towersesque behaviour).
Personally, I hate the miserable machines. But did we object when we could no longer
buy a train ticket at the kiosk? Or was the brief interaction with a telephone
switchboard operator considered part of that \”experience\”? As long as \”we\”
(collective) put money first and patronise these shops, we\’re voting for their
de-humanisation policy. It may also remove the only chance for some spotty 16 year
olds cowering behind the checkout tills to converse in anything resembling English.
init. However, some high street banks are reversing a similar trend introduced a
number of years ago, so there\’s always hope.
We all know that Tesco is consumerism on Four Horses, but they do have particularly
good croissants, dammit.
Posted on January 7, 2007 at 12:02 pm