For a life demo of user interface which fails so terribly that users are known to either swear or fall to their knees and weep silently I would like to invite everyone to AMC (formerly Loews) movie theatre on Boston Commons. This is a one beautiful movie theater and absolutely the only place on Earth where you should see Departed. I did it one night and after we left the theater it felt like the movie never ended: you see a golden globe of Massachusetts state capitol and when walking through Chinatown I half expected Leonardo Di Caprio pop from around the corner.
ATM like machines or rather the reaction that they elicit might actually sell tickets as a major tourist attraction on its own. The theater going public in Boston downtown consist mostly of college kids. They were born after the PC. They never knew the world without a personal computer and it takes a lot to make them give up and get the ticket in a normal way but those ATM do achieve that feat.
You may think that it would take about 3 clicks to buy the tickets. Select the show, select the number of tickets, swipe the card and you are done. Apparently, it would be too simple. First you are presented with the list of movie titles. The screen is small, but not that small that it would not fit 30 titles. However UI designer – if there was a designer – chose the font size that allows only 15 movies to show up. It’s a big movie theater and the movie that you want to see is always on the second or third screen. You get to the next screen by clicking something that looks suspiciously as yet another movie title. One day someone is going to release the movie More and make the whole exercise even more interesting. It’s not easy to find the movie you are going to see because the titles are displayed in a random order. I am not kidding here. It is a random list. One would have thought that at any given moment there are no more than 3 or 4 movie starting, and since I am here at 5 I do not want to see the movie that starts at 10. But no: in spite of the fact that ATM knows the current time, there is no attempt to present movies that are just starting at the beginning of the list.
I do not know about you but I rarely go to see the movie alone. Even less commonly I buy 0 tickets. But that’s exactly the default: 0 tickets. Being in love with 0 is a dead giveaway for mediocre computer geeks. You know – the type that would never go to actually see the movie. By my completely unscientific study 75% of the public on any given night is there in tandems. We might as well make life easier for them, since simple math shows they would need 2 tickets.Once you manage to select the movie and select number of tickets and go through several ‘are you sure’ screens you need to swipe your credit card. It’s not simple since you have to do it exactly the right way – not too slow, not too fast, proper side up. And then the machine starts whirling and ask the pivotal question “Are you an AMC movie watcher”. Since you’re buying tickets to watch the movie at an AMC theatre you are tempted to say “yes”. Big mistake. Movie watcher is a loyalty program. Saying yes requires that you enter your movie watcher id. If you do not have your ID your entire transaction will be canceled and you’ll have to spend another 5 minutes in front of the spiteful ATM. Because this slows everything down and apparently no-one actually is “AMC movie watcher” the person behind you usually yells “Press NO” when the dreaded question appears. I have been a witness to ATM range when quite an attractive girl was close to knocking down a scary looking guy who pressed yes twice in the row and was heading for a hat-trick.
After you safely navigated the screens, machine attempts to print your tickets. At this point it might determine that there is no paper. It was just playing with you, but it is really sorry it cannot print your tickets and – I am not kidding – offers to sell you tickets to some other show. Because apparently the out of paper state is somehow transient and can fix itself. Or maybe this time you’ll be a good pal and actually buy 0 tickets. No need to prevent 0 ticket buying public to enjoy their 5 minutes of pain just because there is no paper I guess.
On this rare occasion when the machine does have paper it starts throwing tickets at you. First you get a receipt from previous transaction. Since no-one really needs or expects it, no-one waits for it either. Then there is a curve ball of tickets. The people in line are friendly: if you do not intercept them properly, they will be willing to catch them for you. Make sure not to knock them down going for a catch. But I am being unfair to UI designers here: the throwing ticket problem is entirely mechanical. Can be probably fixed by installing ticket guard of some kind.
The UI on the other hand is beyond help.
