Analyze an everyday experience and unpack the rules that make it work. List and explain these rules in a short paragraph. Be sure to set up and clarify the situation you choose to analyze.
In grocery stores and some retail stores it is becoming increasingly popular to give the customer the ability to check out without the assistance of a human cashier. These places typically have a number of cashier stations manned by a single employee whose primary job is not to assist people directly but rather provide them with knowledge of the system so that they may help themselves. In this process, the computer at each station must tally up the total purchase price of all the customer’s items which each must be individually scanned by the barcode reader. Then the total weight of the items purchased is checked against the total expected weight to ensure that the customer is paying for all of his of her items.
Unlike a normal register, these self-scan registers require a non-trivial level of user interaction. While these registers are usually equipped with verbal prompts that are designed to direct the user, the prompts are largely disregarded and the success of the process is dependent upon shared cultural understanding. Primarily, the system depends upon the user having observed a cashier at work: taking one item at a time, scanning it into the system, and finally placing the item in a bag. Similarly the self scan stations are divided into three discrete areas to draw attention to this process: an area to place items that haven’t been scanned, a scanning area, and an area to place items after they’ve been scanned. As items that have been scanned must then be added to the scale that checks the total weight against the expected weight, the bagging area itself is the scale. This induces customers who might not be aware of the scale to place their scanned products there anyways. Once all the items have been
scanned, the customer must then settle the balance with the store. For credit or debit purchases the user must slide their card through the card scanner, a process that is assumed to be familiar to a person who has such a card. Cash payments must be fed into the bill and coin acceptors. This process is largely reliant on people’s familiarity with vending machines. Finally, the receipt is printed and presented to the user to signify that the process has been completed successfully.
