My local supermarket (Jewel, a division of Albertsons) installed self-service checkout lines a couple of years ago, which lets shoppers scan and bag their own items. The store's goal is to cut down on the number of employees; the incentive to the customer is something I've never figured out. Usually the lines are shorter at the self-service stations. I won't use them again, however, because of a design flaw that punishes me the better I get at using the scanner.
After I scan an item, the scanner says the name of the item, weighs what I put into the bag, and detects if I take the bag away and put it in my basket. That's fine, but unfortunately the designers decided to make these actions sequential instead of disaggregating them into separate processes. The name must be completely spoken by the system before I put it into the bag; if I work quickly and toss the item into a bag, and then take the bag off the shelf, the system throws a fit. The system halts, plays a short video of putting items into bags, and after about 10 seconds gives me the option to state that I've put the item into my cart. In a further bit of annoyance, the system doesn't give you an audible indication of the halt, so I'll be busy trying to scan an item, wondering what's wrong, while the system displays an error message on a screen that isn't anywhere in my field of vision.
The solution to this problem requires a re-design of the scanning station, disaggregation of the spoken prompts so they can be played simultaneously with the weighing of the items, and adding an audible prompt to warn me that the system wants my attention.
Topics: · design
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