POS and smart cards: new usability headaches
Posted on | December 19, 2008 |
A new dimension is opening up in the POS usability world: the new “smart card readers” are spreading, so that now the most recent POS machines both allow to swipe (to read the magnetic strip) and to insert (to read the smart chip). As predictable, no consistency: you can insert at the bottom fo the POS, card facing up (towards you); or you can insert right above the display, card facing across (towards the man across the counter).
Just in the last few days I happened to witness several persons (of all age mind you, youth as well as elderly) that spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to swipe their cards, to then try the insert maneuver, turning their cards to right, left, up, across…
Well, all of this is anecdotes, to be sure, but interesting (to me at least ;-)) At any rate, will follow-up, and take more pictures to illustrate my point.
Tags: Informal (everyday) tests > POS > standards
Comments
One Response to “POS and smart cards: new usability headaches”
Leave a Reply
July 30th, 2009 @ 9:52 am
By the way, you can also insert your card on the top, but not facing across, and instead facing down - stickers with instructions are ever more frequent….