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A simple experience of collecting tickets
(This is a post by guest blogger Paul Adams, who I introduced here. -mh)
Last night I went to see Borat in my local cinema. I booked the tickets over the phone with my credit card. I turned up at the cinema, went to the ticket machine, put my card in the slot, and out popped the tickets. That was it.
Simple and effective.
Compare this to similar activities elsewhere in the world - check-in machines in airports, ticket collection machines in rail stations, car parking machines...
They often have touchscreen keyboards and options and buttons. You often have to enter your name and reference number.
In these environments, reducing complexity creates better customer experiences.
Yet apparently the machine was designed poorly enough that it needed someone to print large paper signs and tape them on so people could figure out how to use it.
Good experiences are the result of good design. The designer got halfway there. Looks like a theater employee took it the rest of the way.
This is what happens when you don't design for real people.
Good point Robert! In it's current evolution, the machine works great. But that may not always have been the case. Its likely that an employee used the simple skill of 'customer observation' to improve the design:
1. Observe your customers
2. Design for their natural behaviour
What I think this experience also highlights though is that many of our daily interactions with products and services are unnecessarily complex. A business should continually seek to re-examine it's processes and question whether they are *really* necessary.
Did you notice that lots of people ignored the kiosk and queued up for their tickets anyway? I expect lots of people either (i) don't notice the kiosk when they come in or (ii) don't realize that it is a really, really quick way of picking up pre-booked tickets.
Line of sight and bodily occlusion (people standing in the way so you don't see it) are important factors when designing kiosks. If people don't see it, they wont use it.