I have a beef to pick with United and their kiosk check-in development team. For some reason, they have decided that international travelers must scan their passport before allowing to proceed to check in.
A typical transaction goes something like this:
“Please swipe your credit card.”
I swipe my credit card.
“Please choose your language.”
I pick English.
“Please scan your passport.”
Ok great, there is no clue to where the scanner is. Of course its not on the kiosk itself. Its tucked away on the side.
After searching for a few minutes I find it. I put my passport face down and press down. Ok pretty clever to use a press down technique to start a scan, I admit.
I already know my passport will not scan. It is simply not built to be scanned.
The next screen drives me crazy. Either United does not have good interaction designers on board or maybe does not even have them, but their kiosk developers are breaking every rule of good usability.
Once my passport fails to be scanned by the machine, it brings me back to the same screen over and over again.
“Passport could not be scanned. If you would like to try again, press continue and scan again”.
I would expect to see at least one other recourse than the small exit button on the top right corner.
You know the first question the agent asks when directing you to the kiosk? “Do you have a scannable passport?” If only, the kiosk started off like with the same question!
Aaah. Programmers !! Think of alternative situations.
This entry was written by Amit, posted on March 23, 2006 at 12:06 am, filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.