[nlowell]

It's sad for me to admit this but I find online ordering especially for fast food in my area is a much better experience because it standardizes the presentation of the order details for the cashier. When I speak to a human being however I often run into language barriers immediately, and as a result my orders get screwed up more often.

[haswell]

The other side of this coin is that many people take forever at the digital kiosk. If there aren’t enough kiosks and the location is a busy one, I’ll actively avoid that place.

I might as well figure out how to use their website/app at that point.

But all of this leads us further down the path of abstracting/hiding the reality of the purchasing decisions we make. I can’t help but feel this all chips away at our collective humanity.

[dheera]

Yeah a new amazing matcha drink/ice cream place opened at my area. There is always a long line out the door, so I went there to check it out. It was amazing, but the real reason for the long line is that the kiosk wanted an SMS confirmation to place the order.

There was a very tiny "skip" button but most people ahead of me probably didn't see it.

[BeetleB]

You've never been stuck in a line where the guy at the front is spending forever?

[haswell]

I have been stuck in those lines.

But the average time taken by each and every person at self serve lines seems to be higher, because not only does the person need to decide what they want to order, they also need to figure out the UI at the same time. And there seems to be more choice paralysis when the primary way the customer consumes the menu is the moment they walk up to the kiosk.

In a traditional line, half of the ordering process is typically handled by an individual already trained to rapidly enter the order details, and in most cases, the person ordering knows what they want by the time it’s their turn.

These kiosks are about optimizing cost, and just about everything about the end user experience seems worse.

[muffinman26]

I can (usually) manage self-checkout at a grocery store, but I find self-service kiosks for ordering fast food to be paralyzing.

There's no way to ask questions. It's not always clear what's on the ingredients list, or how big a particular menu item is, or if a side of rice/bread is included. If I want to ask them not to put something on an order, or to add something extra, I have to go through the entire workflow and then sometimes backtrack. I'm semi-regularly surprised by what I get, and they also usually don't accept cash. The instructions for how to pick up an order and what identifying information to provide are also often unclear.

Sure, I sometimes get something slightly different from what I wanted when I order from a human, but I usually get something at least close. I think I've had a serious mix-up once in my entire life, when ordering in German from someone else who spoke German as a second language. Even then, the server looked confused and double-checked, it was only my own stubbornness regarding my language proficiency that caused a problem.