Up to 30% of Apple Vision Pro Returns Are Because Users Don’t Get It, Analyst Says::While Vision Pro returns were uncommon, many came down to owners not figuring out its spatial computing.
Up to 30% of Apple Vision Pro Returns Are Because Users Don’t Get It, Analyst Says::While Vision Pro returns were uncommon, many came down to owners not figuring out its spatial computing.
If the user can’t figure it out you built it wrong
Not defending Apple here necessarily but have you not ever been in line for a self checkout? It’s not a difficult piece of software or equipment to use and in my experience half of the users if not more cannot handle it. Users are really fucking dense
Self checkouts don’t work the same across stores, don’t accept the same methods of payment across stores, require human intervention the moment anything off the happy path occurs (like not moving an item fast enough and it scans twice), provide constant interruptions during the execution of their single purpose, and are unfathomably slow and inconsistent at what they do.
They just don’t work well.
The only intervention I have ever needed over 20+ years of using was for an ID check, it’s very very possible to use them without having an issue 99% of the time. They fuck up because people don’t have any patience or just a general misunderstanding of how a cash register works, which is not a difficult concept
They also fuck up because they aren’t designed and implemented properly.
I’d like to:
Instead what often happens:
I’m glad that you’ve consistently had a good experience with them, but I have not. While each of our experiences are anecdotal, the machines’ failure to routinely accommodate my expected use case is an engineering failure. I am a software engineer by trade and know how to interact with computers well. While we have a running joke about customers not reading what’s on their screen that’s no excuse to design an interface that cannot properly react to unexpected or unusual inputs or tasks.
I’m not gonna sit here and tell you your experience is invalid, but having watched thousands of people interact with self checkouts I have to say yours is an outlier at least to my experience, I just see people who expect the computer running the software to read their minds. Never once have I seen a system just do something and lock up without improper input, I’m sure you’re a very bright and tech savvy person but that doesn’t preclude you from having blind spots in the POS sector which is very different than most others in tech. Scales can fall out of calibration but that is really easily fixed by a program within the systems, it would literally take ten seconds if the retailer gave a damn
Can’t help you with the Walmart tap pay though, that’s on them as a retailer and one of the many reasons I don’t shop there, although I know that’s not an option for everyone.
You know, I have to agree with unmagical on this one. It’s gotten to the point where if I want to just run into the shop for a quick trip there’s a mental list of things to avoid that will cause trouble. I’m of the opinion that if I have to change my behavior to avoid something putting up artificial roadblocks for me, then that system is a failure. Case in point I went to CVS to buy some cough medicine for my kid the other day and discovered that cough medicine is now age-restricted. Instead of letting me scan my driver license (you know cause the kiosk has a bar code scanner and my license has this fancy new bar code) the clerk has to come out of whatever dungeon he was in to put the mk 1 eyeball on me and give the kiosk his blessing.
The self checkouts where I am get confused from things as simple as a customer placing their own bags on the scale before even scanning anything and constantly need staff intervention. Not to mention how often prices are wrong on these systems. For the cost of constantly developing, upgrading and maintaining them. In the long run companies would be better off training a few extra staff for express lanes instead. Only my humble opinion though.
Why would you place your bags on a scale designed to detect a scanned product, scan everything pay and then bag if you are bringing your own. That’s what I do every time, stop thinking it’s anything more than a customer facing cash register, the scale/bagging area is the area of transition between pre and post purchase, once the transaction is done it stops caring. I don’t understand how someone can make more than one mistake on those machines without learning what not to do
Because that’s double handling and the scales where I shop have bag holders on the side of the scales for their own bags, hence they are designed to account for the bags weight before scanning and placing items.
Self checkout is a corporate excuse to not train employees and instead get customers to work for free performing point of sale. Expecting customers to be trustworthy and care about performing this task competently for free is “fucking dense”.
That’s what it’s become, but it’s also an easy way to get in and out without talking to anyone if you aren’t dumb as shit. If understanding how a cash register works is so hard we should be paying the workers who do so much better and giving them much more respect. We really should anyways but that’s a different issue.
Corporate initiatives to reduce workforce by misusing technology isn’t the fault of the tech itself. Which is incredibly easy to use, or at least I haven’t ever had an issue that wasn’t the result of another customer over the entire time self checkouts have existed
Edit: to be clear I’ve watched people struggle with them long before giant retailers decided to get rid of as many human cashiers as they can, that is fucked up and I hate that as much as y’all do, but that isn’t the fault of the self checkout system that was originally supposed to alleviate traffic by allowing those only buying a few items to bypass the lines
Not to mention that some of these systems are really badly made.
Self checkouts are the worst! Perfect example of bad engineering. I had the shower thought the other day that perhaps they design them to be slow and crappy so they can gather more biometric and video data of us at the checkout 🤔
Seriously though there is a whole branch of hardware engineering that specialises in making things intuitive and user friendly…even for the special needs (apple customers)
It’s less being bad engineering and more capitalists not wanting to devote enough money to fix a problem.
If you have a problem with working self checkouts that isn’t related to a scale calibration that’s on you, I’ve been using them without issue since I was a teenager which was two decades ago. They are stupidly intuitive
The scales are always off and unnecessary anyway. They factor shrinkage into the price.
most of the self checkouts i have used in the past 5 years or so have not even included the “scale” as part of the process. i do remember maybe once or twice that being an issue but it almost never happens any more. 10 years ago they were all “scale stupid” but it seems like that died off at least here in the eastern US
That’s only true if you assume that people are generally smart, especially when it comes to technology. Such an assumption seems to me to be… overly generous.
Factoring in intuitive functions is part of proper engineering
Nah GUIs were a mistake
I mean, Apple is THE accessible usage company of the world. If you think that Apple can’t make it work, then you also think that nobody can make it work.
Counterpoint:
Made me chuckle … mfers stopped being UX friendly and accessible a long time ago. I still want the home button on iPhones back, it was the perfect phone for my granny but I upgraded her to an XR and she did not get it, gave her an android instead . the button made it way more usable
Your grandpa can plug that in. That’s what makes it accessible. If you don’t like their design choices, that’s a different question.
Plug it in and use it you say?