Awesome Conferences

User Interface Nitpick: Bank Of America edition

I love the new(ish) bank automatic teller machines (ATMs in the US or "CashPoints" in the UK) that scans checks and cash and makes them available for immediate deposit. Imagine recognition for the win! (Should I mention that Bell Labs was showing demos of this to NCR in 1997? What took you so long?)

Anyway...

IMG_0140-notated.jpg

Here's a nitpick that I have with the user interface: The prompt is for "Cash or Checks" but the slots are in the reverse order, Checks on the left, cash on the right. (original photo is here)

Does anyone else find this annoying?

Anyone reading this blog know how to reach the developers at BoA to see if it can be fixed? This isn't the kind of thing I would report at their customer service phone number because it is my experience that there is no line of communication from customer support to the bugtracking/feature request system. Customer support people are usually trained to write down the suggestions just to be polite, they don't actually get submitted.

It would be amazing if companies could expose their bugtracking systems to the world. I'm used to this in the open source movement and would like to see it elsewhere too. The tech industry usually has a parallel bugtracking system that is exposed to the world, done this way to hide confidential information. I wonder how long before this kind of business practice works its way to other industries.

If someone could figure out a way to help companies provide an external view of their bugtracking system I'd be very happy. I'm very optimistic about the trend that Satisfaction has started, trying to re-invent customer support. Customer support is ripe for innovation.

Posted by Tom Limoncelli in Misc

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: https://everythingsysadmin.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1235

4 Comments | Leave a comment

My problem with these ATM is when you deposit multiple checks, it shows you the image for the first one so you can verify the amount. After the first one it doesn't show you the image anymore. I submitted a feedback about this once, but who knows what happened to it...

Do all BofA ATMs have the slots in this order, or only specific models?

Some may be like this, others the opposite, others stacked. (I've seen a few different layouts on Wells Fargo ATMs.)

In which case, since users will probably encounter multiple models but the same UI, it's important for the UI to be consistent between machines, since after a few uses, customers will stop reading the screen and start blind-pushing.

All the BoA ATMs in my area are the exact same hardware model. Are you suggesting that people on the east coast should have to reverse their logic just so that Californians traveling to visit us can withdraw money without any confusion? Pheeh on that.

By the way... the other annoying thing about their ATMs is that you have to re-dip your card and re-enter your PIN after making the littlest mistake. Even when it says "Exit or try again?" the "try again" function asks for your card and PIN again... which is EXACTLY what "exit" would require you to do. It is a distinction without a difference.

All the BoA ATMS in "Boston" with the newfangled deposit mechanism have them stacked on the right, and display this
same UI.

Really, I applaud their efforts to have a consistent UI on different hardware.

Leave a comment

Credits