Bank of America ATM Machine
One annoying piece of UI that I encountered lately was when I went to use Bank of America’s ATM machine in the Brown bookstore. I wanted to withdraw some money and deposit a check. Upon entering my card, the machine took me to this screen:
This screen confused me, as I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do. The fast cash seems like it could be useful, but if I didn’t want to just withdraw money, (since I also had a check to deposit and wasn’t yet sure how much money was in the account), what button did I press? Did main menu take me back to the login page? Or was that what cancel did? It turns out main menu was the right option, which makes sense, but immediately after entering my pin, it gave me my card back. At the time I hadn’t noticed the message at the top of the screen above, so I was very confused. Had my card been rejected? Then I looked at the screen and noticed that the following message had popped up:
This was different from any ATM I had used before, but I didn’t think much of it. Before I took out any cash, I wanted to check what my balance was, so I did, and got a message asking me if I would like to complete another transaction, which I did, so I hit yes. Then I got the following message:
In order to complete another transaction, I actually had to reinsert my card. If that wasn’t bad enough, it took me back to enter my pin for a second time! This is when I started taking pictures, since I knew I had found a bizarre UI. At this point I actually withdrew the money, and before I could deposit a check, it again asked me if I wanted to complete another transaction, made me insert my card, enter my pin, and take my card back. Only then could I choose to deposit my check. In total, for what should have been a simple ATM visit, I had to enter my card and PIN number 3 times for 3 transactions. This was shockingly inefficient, and very frustrating as a user. Imagine if I had wanted to do something much more complex, it could have taken ages.
I think the login screen should be entirely separate from the fast cash page, and maybe these should be options that are prominent after login, so they are still available, but don’t confuse the user while they are inputting their PIN. While they say that the chip card is returned for “security” reasons, I fail to see how this method is any more secure. Perhaps there is something about the technology and security that I don’t understand, but it was still extremely frustrating as a user who was in a hurry to have to reinsert your card every time, especially if you had put it back in your wallet after the first time, not expecting you would need it again. Wouldn’t it suffice to just keep the card in the machine, as other ATMs do? Or maybe just require PIN for further transactions, and not both the PIN and the card? Making these changes to more traditional models would make the experience much more efficient and enjoyable for users.
