The Kyiv subway administration has added new token vending machines at some stations. It would seem that it is designed to make the process of buying tokens faster and easier, however, I’ve found most people stand in line in an “old school” way, buying tokens from a human operator while the machines stand idle with passengers paying merely no interest to their existence. What is wrong with them?
THE TOKEN VENDING MACHINE FRUSTRATION
The machine welcomes passengers with two options available: “Token sale” or “Quick token sale”. What’s the difference? Which of those options is right for you? There’s no explanation given.
Looking at the screen you may find that UI doesn’t look like something you can interact with as there are no UI elements that would look like buttons and I’ve seen people walking away with choosing none of them. By tapping the screen I found that a rectangular with a text works as a button.
Both “Quick token sale” and “Token sale” gives you quite similarly looking screens, providing no clear understanding of their difference. Trying to insert a 1 Hrn into the machine ended with a failure with no reason given. It just returns it. One bill after another. Using a changing machine makes no difference – it rejects every 1 Hrn bill. By looking at the screen you will find a bill acceptor that doesn’t look like a real one. If there was an idea of making it skeuomorphic – why is it located on the opposite side? The progress bar you can see at the bottom of the screen is a timer. Icons at the top allow switching between three languages. I’ve found that switching into English doesn’t allow me to switch back to Ukrainian or Russian. While it isn’t challenging for me, it may become a problem for those who don’t speak English. The icons itself… Have a look at the screen size. Is there any problem with making these icons full size labeled buttons? I could describe all the other failures of trying to buy a token in detail, but I’d rather save your time.
TOKEN VENDING MACHINE ALGORITHM
Experiments have helped me to figure out that the vending machine has two algorithms – the first one allows you to insert a bill, click a button to get tokens and change, and the second – inserting a bill, clicking a button to get tokens and change. А user could switch the machine to the quick mode to get tokens based on a bill denomination or to the regular mode to insert one or multiple bills one after another to get tokens. The quick mode doesn’t accept 1 Hrn bills as it’s less than one token (1 token = 2 Hrn), but it accepts 2 Hrn, 5 Hrn (for 2 tokens and 1 Hrn change), 10 Hrn and 20 Hrn bills. The normal mode allows you to add bills (1,2,5,10 or 20 Hrn) one after another then tap dispense to get tokens and change. Additionally, none of the modes allows you to choose a token amount you might want to buy and there is no way of inserting a 20 Hrn bill to get 2 or 4 or any other amount of tokens and change. Inserting 20 Hrn means you will get 10 tokens anyway.
NORMAL MODE ALGORITHM
1. User taps “Token sale”
2. User inserts a bill
3.1. User taps “Dispense” to get tokens & change
-OR-
3.2. User inserts another bill
3.2.1. User taps “Dispense” to get tokens & change
4. Machine dispenses tokens
QUICK MODE ALGORITHM
1. User taps “Quick token sale”
2. User inserts a bill (only one bill allowed)
3. Machine dispenses tokens or tokens & change
The only actual difference is that in the first case the machine accepts 1 Hrn bills and waits for the next bill, in the other it will not. The reason is as simple as this – token vending machine engineers tried to design an algorithm of selling tokens with no human just mechanics in mind.
MAKING THE WORLD BETTER
Assuming the knowledge given by experiments, we have two scenarios:
- buying tokens without change (2, 10, 20 hrn bills)
- buying tokens giving change (1, 5 hrn bills)
It’s clear that we have a 3-to-2 chance of having a case that doesn’t require a change. It makes the algorithm not only more clear but unifies it and gets rid of an unnecessary step – choosing a mode.
THE UPDATED TOKEN VENDING MACHINE UX DESIGN
BUYING TOKENS WITH A CHANGE SCENARIO
1. User inserts a bill
2. Machine dispenses tokens and provides ability to add another bill or to get change
3.1. User taps “Get change”
-OR-
3.2. User inserts another bill
4. Machine dispenses tokens or tokens & change
BUYING TOKENS WITH NO CHANGE SCENARIO
1. User inserts a bill
2. Machine dispenses tokens
The updated UX provides the user with the ability to interact with the machine with a single tap in the case of “buying with change” scenario while buying with no change needs no taps. All one has to do is insert a bill and get their tokens. There would then be three screen templates instead of all that mess that we can see now. Here are screen design sketches:
1. The welcome screen displaying a token price and 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 bill nominations that are acceptable, as there still are 50, 100, 200 and 500 Hrn bills that don’t work so this note would be useful. You can also find that the arrow is pointing to a bill acceptor.
2. “Thank you” screen – in case of no-change scenario shows a total of tokens purchased with an arrow pointing to the tray.
3. “Insert another bill or press Get change” – in case of change scenario.
The approach doesn’t affect tokens counting in case of charge scenario as it will show you the final “Thank you” screen with a total of tokens purchased. The present token purchase algorithm restricts the max amount of tokens that can be purchased to 10. An updated version makes this restriction irrelevant as if a user needs to get more tokens – he can insert bills one after another without a need of starting a purchase process again. From the perspective of interaction with the screen UI, the updated design requires no clicks at all (or just 1 click if you’ll end with a change scenario).
The last but not least: have a look at the tray – an open compartment where you would find your tokens. It can be hard to grab them with one movement as you may need to slide them right or left to the corner to get them out. Leaving all the speculations about its size aside (we are not in a casino, right?), why not curve it down in the center so all the tokens would slither to the center and it would be much easier to take them out.