The Parking Meter

#UsabilityFail 001

This is the first in our series on usability fails. If you have your own fail to share, send an image to chris@usabilityhub.com, and I’ll test it for you and share the results!

Here at UsabilityHub, we see a lot of tests, thousands every month. While a lot of people test websites, mockups, logos, it’s often the non-digital testing that catches our attention. Bad design is not limited to the digital world.

In the world of User Experience these types of real-world usability issues are abundant. In fact, Don Norman wrote a whole book about user experience in 1988 frequently referencing doors, teapots (such as the one shown above) and of course digital designs that confound user expectations.

A #UsabilityFail occurs when designers or engineers have not properly tested how users will interact with a product and created something that a reasonable person finds tricky to use.

For digital designers, this could be a misplaced button, complex design, or an incorrect icon. Thankfully in digital design it’s often easy to make changes and deploy a fix.

In physical products, however, it is not always so simple. The time and cost of manufacturing mean products cannot be easily fixed, often leaving these products in the world for users to deal with as best they can.

We’re excited to explore these product designs and share with you the weird and wonderful experiences that exist in our everyday lives.

Enter the parking meter

One month ago, UsabilityHub co-founder Tristan Gamilis ran across the parking meter pictured above at a garage in Melbourne.

Upon placing money into the machine, he realized that using his card would be preferable and went to cancel the payment to retrieve his $2.

The yellow button being pointed to with “Cancel” above it does not cancel the transaction when pressed, in fact it doesn’t do anything, while the unlabeled red button with the cross on it does.

So when approaching this machine for the first time, how do you determine which one to use? Tristan repeatedly tried the yellow button, before switching to the correct red button. Was his experience something others would encounter?

We created a Navigation Test on UsabilityHub and recruited 66 people to take the test themselves. Here are the results:

Test Instructions: Imagine you’re paying at a parking meter. You have already entered $2, then change your mind and want to take your $2 back. Where would you press to do this?

55% succeeded in clicking the red button.

45% failed, clicking either the screen itself or the yellow button.

When asked “Why did you click there” the response from all participants were along the lines of “Because it says cancel”.

If 45% of users are clicking on the wrong place the first time, you have a serious usability issue. Thankfully there are a few solutions the machine maker could implement to fix the product.

1. Update the software so that when you click the yellow button, it cancels the transaction. This is a good way to make the change as it requires no physical changes to the machine.
2. Move the location of the Cancel and Accept text on the screen. The way the text doesn’t exactly align above the button suggests that if moved it would be clearer that the X refers to the red button, which also features an X. They could even take it a step further and include text along the lines of “To Cancel the transaction press X,” this would be a clear indicator to press the red X button.
3. Physically move the button locations to reflect options better. Although this is a good idea, in theory, changing a finished product would be expensive and time-consuming, making this unlikely to happen.

Have your own #UsabilityFail to share? Send an image to chris@usabilityhub.com, and I’ll test it for you and share the results!