Australia Post - Payment Terminal upgrade

Role: Senior Product designer
Responsibilities: UX/UI design, prototyping, research

In 2018, Australia Post has upgraded the card payment terminals across their 6990 outlets in Australia. The new terminals have a bigger screen and improved display.

As we were designing the interface for the new terminal, we also would like to leverage this opportunity to improve on any current pain points while interacting with the terminal, incorporate more branding, as well as the potential to introduce promotional material.

The Challenges

Designing for harmony, beyond the screen

Since we were updating the interface of the terminal, the design team was initially keen to apply the latest design language and colour palette that’s currently used online. However, further consideration was made as we were designing for a piece of equipment in a physical environment. We would like to ensure that new terminal interface can co-exist in harmony in the retail store environment. To learn more about this, we consulted the branding team on how they intend to align retail space with the design language in digital channels..

We learnt that there are currently no plans to align the retail space with the new digital design language. Until we know that the retail space would be updating, we could risk having the terminal interface to be inconsistent with the shop fitting for a long time. Given the long term impact of our design decisions, we felt that it would be better to design the interface using the existing branding.

Finding delightful experiences within constraints

While updating the UI, we also had to work within the constraints of compliance requirements, since we’re designing a piece of financial equipment. For example, a financial transaction flow is standardised across Australia and there isn’t room for changes.

However, we can still look into individual elements where we can improve a customer’s experience.

Currently, one customer pain point is that, when customers choose to pay with card, after being told by the retail staff to interact with the terminal with their card, the device still takes a moment before it’s ready for the customer to insert or tap their card. Therefore, while the screen on the existing device says “Ready”, it is not ready. This creates confusion for the customers. Subsequently, this adds additional time for each staff member to serve a customer.

Since we cannot change the flow, we explored options to replace the wording “Ready” to minimise the confusion.

We also looked into elements on each screen, prioritized them based in their importance to the customer. The end results is that a visual hierarchy is formed and screens can be scanned.

The new device allows us to incorporate animation. So we looked into where we can use simple animation that would bring the experience from good to delightful.

Building the prototype

At the time of design, we were not able to obtain the actual terminal during the design process, it posed certain challenges when it comes to design and testing. Without the terminal to test the designs on its screen, we had to find other ways to determine the sizing of elements to ensure that they comply with the accessibility requirements regarding sizing and contrast. Also, it would have been preferable to test with customer with the terminal, seeing they would be interacting with an unfamiliar piece of equipment.

To rectify this, we researched the new terminal online to determine the physical dimensions of the screen. Now we can set the screens designs to print at actual size.

Since we still prefer to test using interactive interface, we built out the prototype on a phone. To try to keep the experience as authentic as possible, I built a sleeve in the actual size of the device.

We took our new UI to testing with our customers in store, to see how the new design is perceived.

User testing

In collaboration with the UX researcher, we opted for the lean method of incepting Australia Post customer at our retail stores. We had the opportunity to visit two stores to interview customers and observe them perform payment tasks using the prototype. One store is centrally located (where many customers are there for work), and the other in the suburbs. The choice of the stores allowed us to intercept a widest range of demographic as possible.

The testing involved

• A questionnaire for us to learn more about participants’ perception on contactless payments in general. As well as,

• Evaluating general usability of the new UI, by providing participants scenarios where they were to interact with the prototype, so we can observe their interactions, make note of any pain-points and capture feedback.

Findings

Many customers told us they just want to “get in, get stuff done and get out”. The design has served them well that everything is easy to read, there was nothing to make them think and add friction.

However, the “Ready” screen would have to be reiterated - the pain point was not relieved by replacing the wording “Ready” with promotional material.  This informed us that customer will need explicit instructions to when they should interact with the terminal.

Another insight from the customer is that we could provide value to them by displaying the right promotional material. We used a Father’s day advertisement in our test, and customers commented they didn’t know when Father’s day was until they saw the advertising. With the right content displayed on the terminal, such as practical information and store promotions. Customer found value in such information.

We then reiterated on our designs based on this outcome. Further comprehensive user testing would be performed before the national rollout.

Afterthought

As a designer, to observe how a user interact with our designs in front of us, could be at times nerve wracking, but also extremely rewarding to see the new design is improving the experience.

It was good to speak to customers and learn about their stories. By learning about the problems of the people I’m designing for first hand. It gives invaluable insights to help me solve the problem I face.