I went to pay a cheque into my company bank account this morning. I knew the bank would be closed but was sure that I'd be able to do it using the ATM outside the bank.
So I put my card in, entered my PIN and selected "pay in" from the menu. The screen asked me how much I was paying in and I told it. It then spat out an envelope and told me to put the cheque and my paying in slip into the envelope and put the envelope in the slot provided.
That's when I realised that I didn't have a paying in slip. No problem, I thought, I'll just cancel the operation.
Except you can't. I'm standing there pressing the "cancel" button and nothing is happening - well except the queue of people behind me are starting to get a littel restless.
Finally, the only way I could get it to do anything way to put the empty envelope into the slot. The machine accepts it and prints me out a slip saying that the amount of my deposit is "subject to checking".
So now I potentially look like I'm trying to defraud the bank by paying in cheques that don't exist. I guess what I should have done is scribble a suitable message on the envelope before posting it. Perhaps something like "I know there's no cheque in the envelope, but I couldn't cancel the transaction - please ask your user interface designers to get a clue!!"
Having said that, you probably didn't have your cheque book with you, just the cheque, right?
-Dom
Don't know about your bank, but at least one of mine doesn't expect a paying in slip, you simply place the cheque in the envelope, and when the machine "eats" it, it prints the details directly on to the envelope.
I couldn't agree more that the interface is lame through, you could at any time realise that your made a mistake, and need to abort the operation. According to the Jakob Nielsen the "STOP" button is one of the most powerful design features in the browser, and woe-be-tide anyone tampering with it...
you probably didn't have your cheque book with you, just the cheque, right?
Of course. Who carries a cheque book around with them these days. That would be terribly last century
