Usability & Vending Machine Design
June 12th, 2006 by Judith
Okay, before you think that I am junk food addict who trolls around vending machines all of the time, I must comment on this new vending machine design which caught my eye a while back.
New Design
The new design leaves no ambiguity as to what’s inside and what you are actually selecting as a beverage. The large buttons with their life-size images are big enough to fit an adult-sized hand. You don’t need to be read in order to identify the beverage selection which is helpful for less literate and/or vision-impaired consumers. The few drawbacks include the fact that you have to press on a button in order to see the price of each beverage in the digital display, as the pricing varies depending on soda, juice or water. Also, the digital display is small and placed quite high on the machine making viewing difficult for people who are short (kids and adults) or wheelchair bound. If I were to tweak the design, I would place the digital display lower on the machine between the coin return and logo and make it twice as large. Other than that, I think this machine is a paragon of vending design.
Old Design
It is almost unfair to compare the new soda machine design to the standard machine found in every office lunchroom. The old machine has the same price/drink problem where you must select the beverage in order to see the price, but at least this interaction model seems to be consistent with most vending machines. The old design features small selector buttons, which are often mislabeled or missing, and a large amount of surface area (huge Pepsi bottle) is dedicated to advertising its featured beverage. I know it is all about branding and identifying the beverage from afar but I think the new design is as effective, if not more so, for at-a-glance recognition with its predominant use of color (blue) and logo treatment (size, repetititon and placement).
