At war with the soda machine
Working here has made me infinitely more aware of usability in everyday things. Some days I think my hubby’s ready to throw his shoe at me if I say “that’s just not usable” one more time. We had one such encounter over the weekend when we stopped to get a soda from a conveniently located machine. (I apologize for the bad resolution – there’s only so much you can do with an iPhone in a shadowy hallway.)
Take a close look … if you put your coins in that machine, where would you instinctively want to push to deploy your soda? The big shiny button picturing the actual bottle of soda, right?
But no! There are still old-style buttons on the side that have to be selected for purchase.
It’s a small detail, but considering that soda companies are now using both functionalities, it made me pause before I actually made my purchase – it wasn’t automatic. If I had put my money in, pushed the button and gotten my soda, I would have thought nothing of this interaction. I wouldn’t have growled and said “this is bad usability.” My husband wouldn’t have rolled his eyes. And so on.
But the fact that the machine didn’t do what I thought it should at first glance made me feel like maybe I was doing something wrong, or maybe I was too old to understand these new-fangled machines, or maybe even the machine was broken. But none of those were true. And in the end, it just made feel like I should have bought a Coke.
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