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Previous: The Gap's placement of jeans | Main | Next: Square Toilet
April 14, 2004 12:01 AM
Broken: Chevron gasoline pump
Steve Wilhelm writes:
This is a picture of a gasoline pump at the Chevron station on Main Street, Los Altos. The buttons on the pump are almost the same color as the pump itself. Because they were so hard to see, the bottom two buttons were colored in by the gas station attendants.Also, the original buttons don't have labels because their function changes based on what the screen is asking -- because of this, the gas station attendants had to label the buttons "Yes" and "No."
The colour of the buttons does appear to be a poor choice. They do not stand out. The unlabelled buttons are quite common, and aren't confusing in my opinion. However, I have encountered this set up where the screen and buttons have been misaligned. It's possible that the pump previously had this problem, but has since had the screen and buttons re-aligned.
I've definitely seen more than one ATM (older models, generally) with misaligned buttons that aren't labeled. It's frustrating, to say the least.
How about defining the buttons and not relying on the screen at all? Plenty of pumps do this and it works fine. Having to squint to see black text on a grey background in bright sunlight just to read yes or no, then move over and hit a button (even when it is aligned) is actually a lot of work compared to an easy to read Yes and a No button.
Clearly when a gas station owner has to correct the design of the pump user interface, it isn't working.
How about defining the buttons and not relying on the screen at all? Plenty of pumps do this and it works fine. Having to squint to see black text on a grey background in bright sunlight just to read yes or no, then move over and hit a button (even when it is aligned) is actually a lot of work compared to an easy to read Yes and a No button.
Clearly when a gas station owner has to correct the design of the pump user interface, it isn't working.
Laura, whatever the precise reason, there must have been complaints about (the design of) the thing... gas attendants don't just start coloring parts of a machine.
Agreed with the comments above on mis-aligned buttons... I've encountered far too many ATMs and debit card readers where I honestly wasn't sure if I was pressing the right button or not.
What annoys me, incidentally, is that the little debit card readers in stores never seem to work the same from store to store. Some only accept "Yes" and "No" responses from the buttons bordering the screen; others, which otherwise look exactly alike, have dedicated "Yes" and "No" buttons at the bottom...
The main time I've had problems with ATM screens is when I've walked up to a drive-up ATM -- which is another brokenness. The screen and buttons are properly aligned when your head is at a seated height, but not standing.
Why was I doing this? Because there are banks which only have drive-through ATMs, not walk up. One of them is in the same neighborhood as my yoga studio, as well as a bakery and used book store which I often visit after class. Now, I don't think the bank, where I don't have an account, wants me to park in their lot for 3-4 hours every Saturday morning. And it certainly doesn't make sense to drive a block to go through an ATM then come back and park again. But the bakery doesn't take plastic. So, I walk up to the drive-through ATM.
Another problem with unlabelled buttons with onscreen messages "aligned" with them is that, at 6'4" tall, I usually tower over the display, so that the lines pointing to the buttons seem to move up to the button above when I look at it. So I have to slouch down to see where the arrow is pointing. With labelled buttons I can just stand there and hit the right ones.
Back in Michigan, they used to have ATMs with tiltable windows. These were first-generation ATMs and the designer went nuts with the thing, including a sliding clear plastic door, and the aforementioned tiltable windows, so you could look straight into the display (which was recessed to avoid problems with the sun and/or the criminal element checking out your balance, one supposes, if one is me) no matter what your current height. Of course the bean counters took one look at this machine and started making squawking noises.
Bean counters are cutting off the most promising avenues of ergonomic satisfaction. They must be killed.
Most ATMs are broken in one way or another -- it would be such a simple thing to put those awful misaligned buttons far apart from each other, so one was at the top of the screen (button #1) and one was at the bottom (button #4). Also they could give out free money, and remember candy wax lips? Those as well.
Another problem with this kind of display is that certain kinds of sunglasses can make the screen appear completely blank! (I'm guessing its because the light through LCD screens is polarized, and if it happens to be perpendicular to the polarization of your glasses, you see nothing!). I remember spending a frustrating couple of minutes at a gas station going from pump to pump until I realized the problem!
I think there were three reasons why the attendants resorted to putting pieces of orange tape on their new gasoline pumps: alignment, button location and color, and our familiarity with touch screens.
As several people mentioned, they have had problems with alignment of this type of interface. That was definitely the case here. You can almost tell by my reflection, that I had to kneel down quite a bit to get this picture. When I was standing up straight (and I am only five foot eight) the arrows appeared to point between third and fourth button and below the last button.
The location and color of the buttons were a problem. The buttons are four equally spaced off white rectangles. The buttons are placed quite far away from their labels, a whole button length from the arrow. The buttons were located to the left of the dynamic labels. Only the bottom two buttons are used while purchasing gasoline. There is no tactile feedback when the buttons are pressed.
It is hard to see, but there were several fingerprints on the screen over the “No thanks.” I think many of people now expect kiosks to use touch screens.
I think the buttons probably got colored after the clerks inside the store got tired of giving hand written reciepts or correcting other errors during their busy periods. Irregardless of whether people SHOULD have made errors, I would guess that the employees probably changed the buttons only after experience showed that they DID make them. Of course there's no way to know that for sure from the evidence given.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: The Gap's placement of jeans | Main | Next: Square Toilet
See, I don't find this confusing at all, except why the attendants did that. I've used screens like this all the time where the buttons aren't labelled. The screen is displaying the text immediately to the right, with an arrow pointing at the button - very clearly lined up. Coloring and labelling the buttons (when the meaning can change) seems more likely to cause confusion than alleviate it.
Posted by: Laura at April 14, 2004 01:20 AM