Usability and Credit-Card Readers
I get annoyed by credit-card readers. You know, the kind used at gas pumps and ATMs. I always have to look at it and try to figure out which way I’m supposed to put my card in, because it differs from one to another. In order to do that, I have to look for the ubiquitous instructional diagram and try to match my card to the illustration, because there’s no perceived affordance on the device itself.
Okay, it’s not rocket science. It takes maybe 2-3 seconds, and a tiny bit of thought to figure out. BUT. But why should I have to spend this time and effort at all for something that really could be effortless?
It’s like the example of the doors that Don Norman covers extensively in The Design of Everyday Things. You shouldn’t need to label your doors with instructions — “Push”, “Pull” — because people should know this intuitively from the shapes of the handles. Likewise, you shouldn’t need to label your credit card readers with instructions, because people should know how to use them intuitively.
There are two ways to fix this.
One, build some sort of affordance into credit card readers that only lets you put your card in one way, and makes it visually obvious what that way is. Since credit cards are basically featureless rectangles with no built-in directionality, this would be difficult.
Two, put magnetic strip readers on both sides, so that it doesn’t matter which way you put in your card. The existing affordance — a flat slot indicating where you put the card — is sufficient, and no further instruction is required, because it just works. I think this would be the best way to go, unless there’s some technical reason preventing it that I don’t know about.
The larger moral is that simple things we use everyday should “just work”, and if you’re constantly having to provide instructions on how to use something, that probably means that it’s annoying people.
Don’t annoy people. Practice good design. 
February 28th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Many card readers require the card to be facing one side or the other, so the technical difficulty would be that you’d need four readers, not two (one for each possible orientation of the strip. While that would solve the interface problem, I suspect that the quadrupling of costs would force non-adoption.
While I don’t have any of them in my wallet, I’m a big fan of the chip-in-card systems, where all you have to do is hold the card near the reader and it registers, or the key dongle (not “dingle,” darn iPhone spell-check) system that Exxon (and others) use. There’s no reason why credit cards have to be cards, other than historical precedent. Perhaps quicker adoption of one of these systems would solve the problem. I’d like to think that from a UX standpoint this transition would be fairly easy, considering car manufacturers also use the tech for “keyless” entry.
February 28th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
That’s a good point, it’s true that there are 4 different ways you could conceivably insert the card in the slot. However, I feel like the up/down dimension is easier to deal with, since writing has an up and a down and cards have writing on them. So, for the vertical type of slot, I think it’s highly likely that most people would put it in with the writing rightside-up.
The horizontal type of slot is a more difficult challenge.
Good point also about looking beyond the card form-factor altogether. I used to have a debit card with the chip in it, and I did like that a lot. And I think that’s exactly the reason why it is seen as an improvement, because it addresses the problems described above.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Speaking of gas pumps, why does one of our cars have the fueling access on the driver’s side and the other on the passenger’s side. I’m constantly having to think about that when I pull into the gas station. And to pump gas into the passenger side fuel tank requires me to pull into the station against the usual flow of traffic and maneuver my car going the “wrong” way. Very irritating.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
And yet another thing: When the grades of gas at the gas pump are in a different order from usual. There’s one chain around here where they’re reversed, with the most expensive grade at the left. I’ve almost gotten the wrong kind a couple of times.