The ‘User Experience’ of an ATM from a user’s experience

It’s a Monday morning and you are rushing to office. Just when you were about to enter a cab, you remember that your wallet is empty. You rush to the nearest ATM to withdraw money. You open the door to the ATM and a friendly voice welcomes you XYZ bank’s ATM. Once at the kiosk you see a welcome message on screen. So far so good, the bank has done everything right to woo you into opening a new account with them. A message appears on the screen asking you to insert the card. It takes you almost a second to figure out where you should insert the card as the hardware design is a bit different from your banks. Once you insert the card a mysterious force sucks the card into the kiosk, you are a bit confused…”Hmm..my bank’s ATM never does that. All I do is swipe my card. Did I do something wrong? Will I get my card back? A lot of questions race through your mind as you wait patiently for the machine to process your card. A few seconds later another message flashes in the screen to enter your ATM PIN. You carefully key in the PIN..nothing happens. You look at the console and you see two strangely colored buttons OK & Enter. A flurry of questions pass through your mind. Is it OK or Enter? While you are busy thinking this, you again start wondering about where the hell your ATM card is? You decide to take a wild guess and press the green colored button because you associate green with the symbol for Go Ahead! The machine makes some machiney sounds and throws up a new screen at you. It gives you three options ‘Savings Account’ ‘Current Account’ and ‘Cancel’ and the machine has 4 buttons by the side of the screen. For a second you wonder…do I have a Savings Account or a Current Account? You are a bit embarrassed by your ignorance but you decide to go with the first option. You squint a bit, take a step back and draw an imaginary line connecting the buttons with the options to find out which button corresponds to the option you want to enter. After this small exercise you begin wondering, “Now What?” Again the machine throws up a screen at you with two options vis-a-vis ‘Withdraw Cash’ ‘Check Balance’. 2 options and 4 buttons! Another exercise in fundamental geometry and you figure out which button to press at the same time wondering, how many people check their account balance in an ATM in this age of mobile banking. Phew finally, the machine asks you to enter the amount you wish to withdraw. You key in 900 and press OK. You wait for the machine to dispense money but alas it shows an error message. It tells you that the machine can only dispense 100, 500 and 1000 rupee notes. You wonder what just happened. You decide to have another go. This time when the machine prompts you to enter the amount to withdraw, you are more careful and as a result you notice that you have to enter decimals as well…so if you want to withdraw 900 Rs. you have to enter 900.00. You also check the option to dispense a receipt. By now your patience and self esteem has hit its nadir and fortunately for everyone the machine dispenses your money and the receipt. You take the money and receipt and walkout of the ATM only to rush back to retrieve your ATM card which was inside the machine all the while. You come out of the ATM booth with a tarnished self esteem and a lower bank balance. As you make your way back to the taxi your paltry account balance stares at you with its four digits and you begin to wonder, “Should I take a bus instead?”

To be continued (may be )…