alt Hacker NewsOut of curiosity, what issue did you have with the McDonald’s self-order kiosk? I actually think McDonald’s has the best kiosk I’ve ever encountered. The little animation that plays when you add an item to your cart is a little annoying (but I think they’ve sped that up). But otherwise, it’s everything I’d want. It shows you all the items, tells you every ingredient, and lets you add or remove ingredients. I have a better experience ordering through the kiosk than I do talking to a cashier.
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Since you asked, and since I take my kids to the McDonald’s play place some weekends, and I’ve actually spent a bit of time pondering my ideal kiosk UI and what I don’t like about theirs:
It seems designed to maximize how many screens they show you to make an order. Each one with a slight delay and animation.
At a drive through I can say “gimme a number one, medium, with a Coke Zero” and they give me my total. That’s the convenience the kiosk is up against.
At the kiosk there’s:
- A welcome screen you have to tap
- A “carry out or dine in” screen
- Always one other screen with a dumb question about apps or whatever, tap through
- A top level menu with a bunch of categories, burgers, drinks, sides, desserts, etc… I guess I want burgers? But it’s a combo, hmm. I guess I’ll figure out how to make it a meal. Tap burgers.
- Then another screen with burgers, in a different order than the drive through numbering, tap Big Mac
- Then another dedicated screen to shows you a picture of a Big Mac, with a bunch of customization options, which you have to scroll past and verify that it matches the defaults you expect, and at the bottom you can tap add
- Then another screen asking you if you want to make it a meal
- Then another screen asking the size
- Then another screen asking what to drink
- Then another screen that shows you the drink
- Then another screen for what size
Etc etc etc. Each of these screens takes a few seconds to display too, just slow enough to be infuriating.
In my mind the ideal kiosk is something where you get “the menu” (like what you see on the billboard in the drive through) with the usual big squares with a number on them and a picture of the meal. Tapping one puts it in a “drawer” section with my order in it, and each item in the drawer can have simple in-line edit controls for “size” and “what to drink”, with them showing up empty in a way that makes it obvious I need to fill in those answers before I can check out.
I should be able to tap one button for the combo number I want, another for the size, another for the drink, then checkout, all on one screen without long delays. If I don’t want a combo but want individual items, I can just scroll down a bit to look at the full menu. The order drawer stays where it is.
Or hell, just let me say “number one with a Coke” and have a very simple ASR and NL parser figure it out and put it in my pending order to edit.
Customizations can be behind a simple “customize” button on each item in my pending order. If I don’t have customizations I can just ignore it. What you get with no customizations is what you’d get if you just order it verbally to a human without specifying anything. The concept of “here’s how we typically make it, if you want anything different let us know” is a very deeply ingrained and familiar concept to restaurant patrons, and being forced to answer every little question even if you don’t care, adds up to a lot of frustration.
Fast food places came up with the combo numbering system to make ordering faster, and it was super convenient and fast, because there’s a financial incentive to get you through the drive through because you’re blocking other customers. But since they have several kiosks available, they seem to not care at all about the efficiency of the user interface, because it’s not a problem for them. But it’s still a problem for me, because I still want to order quickly, despite it not blocking other customers. It’s a huge step down from just saying “number one with a Coke”.
It takes longer than ordering with a cashier, it keeps trying to upsell you, and it's always out of receipt paper because unsurprisingly the company that isn't willing to pay a person to take orders is also not willing to pay a person to maintain the kiosks.