PROBLEM:
Self-checkout Kiosk
A research project aimed at understanding users pain points at the time of using University parking self-checkout kiosk.
Overview
At Indiana University Purdue University, a lot of people including students, professors and visitors who are coming to the University are facing the issue of interaction with the self-checkout parking kiosk.
OBJECTIVE AND GOALS:
The main purpose and objective is to do a mixed method research on how the student, faculty and visitor parking services on campus are utilized. Analysis of the current operations, functions and customer interactions to solve the pain-points of the users.
Users:
Anyone who uses the self-checkout parking kiosk at the time of parking car in the university parking space.
“Kiosk has to meet user’s needs as well as user’s satisfactions by providing better experiences to customers as Kiosk has expanded its role as 2-way communication medium to offer information of various contents.”
My Role
Responsible for Secondary research, Field Observations, User Interviews & Research Analysis, Brainstorming & Ideate.
UX Methods
Field study, user interviews, observations, secondary research, user persona, affinity mapping, code generation
Collaboration
Collaborated with 4 other students in this academic project.
Tools
Miro, Figma
Duration
3 weeks
Discover
Problem:
At Indiana University Purdue University, a lot of people including students, professors and visitors who are coming to the University are facing the issue of interaction with the self-checkout parking kiosk.
Users:
Anyone who uses the self-checkout parking kiosk at the time of parking car in the university parking space.
Objective and Goals:
The main purpose and objective is to do a mixed method research on how the student, faculty and visitor parking services on campus are utilized. Analysis of the current operations, functions and customer interactions to solve the pain-points of the users.
Research
Secondary research:
I went through six research papers and articles as a part of my secondary research and the insights I got from this set the base of what to look for in field observation and interviews.
Field Notes & Observations:
30-40 min of field observations conducted to understand what are the issues users are facing in real time then they use the self-checkout kiosk at the parking. Through observation, I came to know that if we divide the whole self check-out kiosk system of the university parking, then there are 4 steps of that which are:
(1) Entry, (2) Sequence of the process, (3) Feedback of the tasks which you are performing, (4) Payment via credit card/debit card/cash. During the observations, I noted down the issues where users were struggling and if I categorized them then all those issues will come under same these 4 categorized. People were stuggling to understand how to use that kiosk.
User Interviews:
It is extremely important that we listen to both sides of the story so we chose to interview:
Users of self-checkout parking kisok to park their park
Employees who operate the parking services and operations
This would potentially allow us to find unique insights as well as get an inside perspective on how things run.
Analysis
Insights from literature surveys:
- Through secondary research we came to know that the Practicality, Usability, Emotions, Superiority of Information Quality, Convenience are the main key issues with self-checkout kiosk.
- This insights discovered by Seung-Min Lee with his team during their research and they tried to analyze the big data in social media by using “SOCIAL Metrics” solution. These key problems came with more than Mean value above 3.
- Field study & Observations and User interviews were also supporting the insights we learnt form the secondary research.
Insights and codes through observations and interviews:
Thematic Analysis:
- For the analysis of our findings, we chose to conduct an affinity mapping to breakdown the facts we collected from the interviews and findings.
- The process of a successful parking procedure is divided into certain phases, so we decided to break down the analysis in the same fashion. This way, we’re able to analyze the experience step by step and identify pain points.
User Pain Points:
User personas:
- Based on all the research, field study, observations, interviews and all kind of analysis, we realize the most of the users having issues with the entire process of the parking kiosk especially the onboarding and the actual interface of the kiosk.
- Therefore our personas were based on these outcomes.
Take Aways:
The onboarding assumes that users are fluent in English and have the time to read through a lot of instructions.
Slot to swipe/tap credit/debit card has a very confusing interface and location in the kiosk.
If a user somehow inserts a wrong parking pass, the instructions or feedback on what went wrong or how the user can undo the mistake and what to do next if a mistake happens is completely missing.
Ideate
Design Directions:
Any solution we conceptualize needed to –
- Redesign the layout of how the process of ticket processing is conveyed to customers.
- A display could be mounted at the entrance of each garage to indicate available slots in the garage to prevent users having to circle through the garage to then find out there are no slots available.
- If the slots for handling various tickets and cards are labeled correctly then the user will not face any ambiguity in this regard.