Infuriating when people can't use simple devices

[Caged]

Again, classic bad design.

Try paying cash at one of those things,
OK, where's the cash input? - by the screen, nope, it's over there on the right, below eye level, surrounded by other odd notices and holes.

OK, done, where's my change, right next to where I put the money in?
Don't be stupid, notes come out of another slot further on the right and change comes out by your feet.

OK, goods receipt, does that appear by the screen?
Of course not, it quietly prints out over on the left and drops onto the floor.

Meanwhile the machine is screaming at you to pick up your bags, thanking you for using the express-turbo-self-checkout, and hopes your shopping experience at ******* supermarket has been a pleasant one.

FU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That and someone must have designed something reliable by now to open the plastic bags for you. It's pretty clear that self-checkouts have been designed by shoving a bunch of off the shelf parts wherever they fit instead of stopping to think about anything.

 

[Manbatius]

That old lady Sounds like a legend!

I've had to be restrained today with some text responses:

"My monitor fell over when redecorating, it now says there's a cable unplugged.
What do you think is wrong?"

........

I think what frustrates me more is people with a "I don't want to learn how to use this, just fix it" attitude.

Then don't use it!

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I work for a software house where 75% of the staff call me or the boss over because they don't know how to use their email account. A SOFTWARE HOUSE!!

I might be able to go a bit better than that.
One of my best mates is the Manager over lots of software packages in a massive company and he's barely able to email let alone text or navigate a link I sent him into Google Docs.

 

[Calgar117]

I have done call centre worl for years, whenever i have customers say they dont understand technology always felt like saying ok but you can follow instructions right?

 

[Angilion]

I wonder on a daily basis how many people managed to get to adulthood let alone beyond middle aged given their complete inability to comprehend and follow simple instructions on modern devices.

Card machines in shops are a classic example, there's only four ways of inserting a card and nearly all machines give you information on which way to insert your card and yet, some people manage to get above four attempts without getting it right. Then when the machine tells them 'Remove Card' it's like it's been suddenly translated into Klingon and you hear them asking the cashier 'it says to remove my card? what should I do?', humanity, I despair.

We have an ATM at work in which the card reader is mounted vertically rather than horizontally. That's it - the card reader is just at a different angle to the card readers in bank ATMs. No other differences. The card goes in the same way around as in a bank ATM and in any case there's a picture right next to the card slot showing a card with a magnetic strip on the right hand side, facing the user. Every day, at least one customer is unable to work out which way around to put the card and repeatedly gets it wrong (yes, sometimes more than 3 times) until someone does it for them.

Then there's printed receipts. It's very common (at least a dozen times a day) for someone to ask for cash with a receipt when they didn't want a receipt and walk away before the receipt even prints. It's not even a icon issue - the description of the function of a button is displayed on the screen in English right next to the button and all our customers read English. As far as I can tell, it's because the top button is "cash with receipt" and the next button down is "cash without receipt" and many people don't read any further than "cash".

 

[bitslice]

Every day, at least one customer is unable to work out which way around to put the card

As far as I can tell, it's because the top button is "cash with receipt" and the next button down is "cash without receipt" and many people don't read any further than "cash".

Again, bad design.
Why make it an issue for a card to be inserted in one particular orientation?
Just make it so whatever way the customer puts it in, the machine can spin it around to suit itself.

If cash is what customers want then make that button one, and not "Cash without receipt", just "Cash".
Don't make people read words they were not expecting, humans don't react well to negative stimulus.


Good design:
http://www.designboom.com/design/ideo-redesigns-the-atm/

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Again, bad design.
Why make it an issue for a card to be inserted in one particular orientation?
Just make it so whatever way the customer puts it in, the machine can spin it around to suit itself.

If cash is what customers want then make that button one, and not "Cash without receipt", just "Cash".
Don't make people read words they were not expecting, humans don't react well to negative stimulus.

You run the risk of dumbing down things too much.

People need to learn to take responsibility for their actions. It's not difficult to discern between "cash with receipt" and "cash without receipt".

I use the cash point in Welsh language (as you are asked which language you'd prefer when you begin), but the amount of times I've seen someone press the Welsh icon and then get annoyed because they can't read the instructions

 

[zoomee]

Ask me to build a PC, watercool it, fit a car stereo, install a home cinema system, wire in a new light etc etc - I'm all over it.

Ask me to operate the washing machine and I'm like - wtf!?!

 

[DJMK4]

Technophobe's kind of annoy me


It's like electronic devices, or technology is going to jump out and slice off their arm if they god forbid try and learn how to use stuff.

 

[Angilion]

Ask me to build a PC, watercool it, fit a car stereo, install a home cinema system, wire in a new light etc etc - I'm all over it.

Ask me to operate the washing machine and I'm like - wtf!?!

Washing machines have an awful user interface. I'd say that it was badly designed, but I think that it wasn't designed at all.

I put everything in on 4, 40C. I've forgotten what 4 means.

 

[D.P.]

I work for a software house where 75% of the staff call me or the boss over because they don't know how to use their email account. A SOFTWARE HOUSE!!

As you can see this is rather traumatising for me. Simplifying things is great and it means that they don't need to have the basic background knowledge in order to use it but we're just not at that stage. We're still very much at the stage where 3/4 of the world are looking at the other and asking "Why doesn't magic happen when I push this button and why can't it do everything for me?!?"

But I don't see why this is surprising. I could read and translate scientific papers on video compression, develop my own mpeg2 library etc, but I can't figure out how the heck my blu-Ray player works.

I helped develop software that has led to several patents and publications, with highly complex machine learning, non-linear optimization, state estimation, data mining back end, hundreds of thousands of lines of code, etc. I even did a little of a front end for smartphones. But I can't work out the nuances of my phone and have to get my wife to help me. Still haven't worked out how to get voicemail working for example.

I swear half the time with software I would rather look at the source code to work out how to use it!

 

[Damnations Fury]

Reminds me of a woman at work back when when used to have to do a little IT support.

Got a call that her PC wasn't working and that I had to come down to fix it. She immediately had the mindset that anytime anything went wrong it was IT's fault and they had to come and fix it and was not interested in being walked through any diagnostics.

So off I go downstairs and take a look, monitor light is orange so in standby. I press the power button and everything comes to live as if my magic. Her immediate anser is, "I don't do PC's". This woman's job involved 75% of the time either using a PC or training new staff memebers on our sales system on one, so by that statment she is in the wrong job.

She was also in her mid to late 20's. Says it all about some people.

 

[Make]

I hate it the most when you are instructing someone over the phone and they say "Nothing happens".

So, having an error code on the screen is "Nothing". Or if a menu changes from 1 option to another, like moving down one step, it's "Nothing" until you ask "Is the 'picture' option now highlighted in yellow background instead of 'sound'?".

If you can't work out or can't be bothered to learn, why the hell would you buy a 2000 pound TV in the first place.

Yes, I work in customer support as one of my jobs.

 

[BubbySoup]

Some of my clients are old, like 70's old and using PC's - last night I had to help a lady whose "icons were behaving strange" - she had forgotten that you had to double click on them with the left button /killmenow

 

[Calabi]

Like people who can't use self service checkouts in supermarkets

No one can use them.

 

[TheBDog]

But I don't see why this is surprising. I could read and translate scientific papers on video compression, develop my own mpeg2 library etc, but I can't figure out how the heck my blu-Ray player works.

I swear half the time with software I would rather look at the source code to work out how to use it!

It's not that surprising but it is fun to complain about the folks that make my job more difficult

I think that a lot of the time when companies try to make things 'easier' then what they're actually doing is making it harder for people who have already learnt certain things.

For example, my nan recently got herself an iPad and has never even had a computer before. She loves it and has got the hang of it pretty quick.
In contrast, my mum had a go on it (having a Win 7 desktop at home for several years now) and she really struggled with it. Ok so she didn't ask "Where's the start button gone?" exactly but she found it quite confusing.

 

[B@Th*nG]

Again, bad design.
Why make it an issue for a card to be inserted in one particular orientation?
Just make it so whatever way the customer puts it in, the machine can spin it around to suit itself.

isn't the wallet at fault here? I know it's a bit chicken and egg, but it does need to fit in a wallet. what do you propose to make something roughly card shaped fits in only 1 way without compromising the strength of the product?

If cash is what customers want then make that button one, and not "Cash without receipt", just "Cash".
Don't make people read words they were not expecting, humans don't react well to negative stimulus.


Good design:
http://www.designboom.com/design/ideo-redesigns-the-atm/

it does say "cash" and "cash with receipt" doesn't it? i might be wrong on that one.

plus that cash machine looks like a urinal. what's that pink thing behind the glass?!! ahhh!!!

B@

 

[estebanrey]

My mum rang me up the other day in tears because she couldn't install Microsoft Office 2013....

Her "It says it can't install because Microsoft Office 2010 Starter is already installed"

Me "So uninstall it"

Her "Eh? How do I do that"

Me "Mum, you've had a PC now for 5 years which you use it everyday and I've showed you how to uninstall programs at least 10 times"

Her [more sobbing]

Me "Sigh, I'll be over in half an hour"

 

[robgmun]

No one can use them.

I must be a wizard then, next stop, rule the world!!!

 

[Hyburnate]

I like the talk of EPG's being bad UI because I agree. The other day my mum called me downstairs to use iPlayer on the Sky+HD box, I sat there for ten minutes trying to find my way around it, it's so bloody slow. No wonder she couldn't find how to do it. I gave up and said "Just buy a NowTV box, at least those work!"