Trend: Self Checkout Interfaces – the “Cancel” Menu

Here at UI Trends, we normally cover trends in Web UI’s and occasionally we’ll bring up desktop applications.  But we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t step outside of the box every once in a while.

With that in mind, I couldn’t help but write about something that has been bugging me for years.  I know you’ve seen it too and been annoyed.  You’re at the grocery store, and you’re trying to “self checkout”.  You swipe your bank card, then low and behold, you’re asked for your PIN.  You don’t want to enter a PIN!!  You’re trying to earn points on your card.  You’ve been saving and saving and saving up these elusive points for YEARS now; only 50,000 more to go and you can finally get that awesome “foot spa”.  So why in the world would you want to use your card as a debit card and forgo these precious points?

But there is a way!  You may not know it, but there’s an entire world of opportunities, hidden just one click away.  It’s a a whole new menu, that leads to a magical land of free magazine subscriptions, $25 gift cards, and George Foreman grills.  All you have to do is hit CANCEL… what, you didn’t know that??

It’s sad to say, but no one really expects much ease of use from these Self Checkout Systems.  The real problem is that these UI’s are effectively hiding functionality that the merchant would rather not pay for (credit card transactions are usually more expensive to process than a debit card transaction).  And even worse, they’re doing it very inconsistently.  Some have started actually including a  ”Credit” button, but it’s either small and indistinguishable from the number keys on the PIN screen, or you still have to press one more buttons to even see it.  Why not just making it more interesting and have the button randomly jump around the screen?foreman