An ATM’s hardware gets a lot of attention, and rightly so — if the moving parts don’t work, the ATM may have trouble dispensing money. And if it’s not well-built, it could be easily damaged or stolen.
But it’s the software that tends to determine whether an ATM experience is painless or tedious. A well-designed user interface lets customers do their business quickly, easily and hassle-free, with fewer frustrating mistakes. A poorly designed interface may cause customers to go elsewhere.
Important as it is, most people don’t think about the interface unless it performs really, really badly. But the interface doesn’t just pop out of nowhere. Someone had to plan out how the machine would work, and then program those steps into the software.
A blog called Physical Interface offers an interesting behind-the-scenes glimpse of how one ATM interface was designed — in this case, for Wells Fargo ATMs.
The designer was part of a team approached by Wells Fargo to redesign the interface for touch screens. That presented challenges but also opportunities.
Old menu, left; new menu, right.
Above are the before (left) and after screenshots of the main menu page. Because it’s a touch screen, menu items no longer had to be associated with a button on the side of the screen. That let the interface use the entire screen, and eliminated the “need” for clunky, distracting filler visuals.
The buttons are bigger but the graphics are played down (transparent backgrounds, no borders). The result is more attractive, restful and easy to read: You don’t have to hunt through a busy visual landscape to find the function you want. Color coding lends further structure to the buttons.
There’s a lot more at the link. The designers had to consider how people use machines and the different models of ATMs owned by Wells Fargo. They designed a high contrast color palette so the screen would be legible in both semi-darkness and direct sunlight.
All in all it took the design team a year to develop the design, and another six months for Wells Fargo to begin installing it on their machines.
