I was at a local fast food establishment getting lunch when I found myself behind a gentleman attempting to work the self-serve soda fountain. It had a touch screen where you navigated down a series of menus to your selection of tasty beverage to be dispensed from the single nozzle below the screen. The gentleman just didn't know how to use the device. He would select a soft drink category, the screen would then show a bunch of selections with round buttons on the screen, with one button being slightly above the rest, and larger. He would press other buttons, each one would jump up slightly and enlarge, the previous one would jump down and shrink, but the gentleman never clued in that the one button that was larger was “selected” and that he should then place his cup below the nozzle and press the physical dispense button.
This went on for several minutes before he turned to me and lamented that the machine wasn't working. I then pointed out to him how the machine worked. He thanked me, got his preferred drink dispensed into his cup and left.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Obviously, the makers of the soda dispensing machine thought about the UI (User Interface) but the fact that the gentleman in front of me couldn't figure it out shows that it wasn't entirely intuitive as the makers wanted it to be. I, knowing how the computer sausage is made, and having used various UIs over the decades, knew how to navigate the machine despite not knowing Spanish (the currently selected language with no obvious way that I saw to change it).
It's not an easy problem to solve. I have had problems using the self-checkout lanes at the grocery store when an item I have doesn't have a bar code on it, like fresh produce, or the bar code that is on the item doesn't scan for some reason. The interface itself may make it obvious that one can search for the item, but what to type? I recently had issues with a green pepper, and the solution was to look up “pepper” and select “green pepper” from the list, not to search for “green pepper.”
User studies? What are those?
I'm not optimistic that this will improve over time.