[Silamoth]

Out of curiosity, what issue did you have with the McDonald’s self-order kiosk? I actually think McDonald’s has the best kiosk I’ve ever encountered. The little animation that plays when you add an item to your cart is a little annoying (but I think they’ve sped that up). But otherwise, it’s everything I’d want. It shows you all the items, tells you every ingredient, and lets you add or remove ingredients. I have a better experience ordering through the kiosk than I do talking to a cashier.

[ndiddy]

It takes longer than ordering with a cashier, it keeps trying to upsell you, and it's always out of receipt paper because unsurprisingly the company that isn't willing to pay a person to take orders is also not willing to pay a person to maintain the kiosks.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> It takes longer than ordering with a cashier

Depends on what you're ordering and who the cashier is.

If your order is the happy path of no customizations of a combo with an experienced cashier, it can be done in seconds, for sure. "Medium #4 with a Diet Coke", pay, done.

But if you customize your burger or ordering a lot of items a la carte and you're dealing with a new cashier that has weak English skills, good fucking luck. You'll likely need to wait for them to figure out they need to call someone over to help, have to repeat your order, and you end up spending far more time.

> it keeps trying to upsell you

Yeah, I'll agree that's obnoxious, especially when it's trying to upsell you something that's already on your order. I ordered a combo. I don't need you to add another fry.

[marknutter]

It's easily one of the most intuitive and straightforward kiosks out there today and you don't have to wait for one of the cashiers to notice you nor worry about them punching in your order incorrectly.

[Silamoth]

Glad someone else feels the same way! Knowing that I enter my order in correctly is the biggest win there for me as a picky eater. The cashier is just entering it into a computer anyways, so it makes sense for me to enter it in myself. I honestly wonder why more restaurants don’t do this. It’s not that hard to wrap a halfway decent UI around the system you already have.

[teiferer]

Restaurants, pubs etc. serve multiple purposes.

If it's purely about the food, receiving it, consuming it, then sure, get the human out of the loop, interact with a machine. Ideally even the preparation is done by a machine. No human error or hair involved. Why even go there, let it be delivered to your home.

But these places are also about the experience of social connection. The bar keeper, the waiter, the chef. They are all involved in this experience and the actual food is "just" one component, one detail, albeit an important one. My favorite restaurants would be nothing without the people there.

It's similar with music. It's not just about the produced sound waves. The musician forms a social bond with the audience. Even when listening to a recording, my mind is re-living or at least imagining a live sitting, that connection with the musician. No machine generated music will ever be able to replace that.

[necovek]

I am more concerned with getting the right order and not with entering the right one. McDonalds will still get it wrong when you have a complex "change" of defaults even if it's entered correctly.

Other places optimize for this better by not having too many hand-overs between order and preparation.

[Silamoth]

Hmm. I’ve never really had those issues. It’s also much faster and easier than ordering with a human. I guess it does try to upsell you, but humans often do, too. And to me, it’s worth it to just click “No” in exchange for the added convenience (mostly in getting my order right).

I have had them run out of receipts, but it’s never mattered for me. If I’m dining in, the plastic number you carry to your table makes sure I get my food. And if I’m taking it to-go, they always find me anyways.

[ryandrake]

> It’s also much faster and easier than ordering with a human.

I'm not sure how that could be. I can walk up to the counter and say "Big Mac Large Fry Small Coke" faster than you can navigate the first screen of the kiosk, and a skilled counter worker can key that in and be done before I even get my credit card out.

[Silamoth]

The problem, I’m a picky eater. I never order something that simple. I always need it with “No X” or “Only Y”. Cashiers often struggle with that, even if they understand me well (which they don’t always). It’s easier for me to see everything an item comes with and make sure I’m entering my order correctly.

[necovek]

McDonalds' menu is not designed for folk like you. In my part of the world, we had traditional fast-food joints where the question would be inverse: out of the things you can see and add to your burger, pick a few. That is very efficient with a human prepping your burger.

[NavinF]

Hm? McDonalds is one of the best for customization. Everything is removable and the software knows the calorie count of each ingredient so the total that shows up next to each item in the cart is accurate

[doug_durham]

You have to wait in line behind several people to get to the point where you can talk to the cashier. Most McDonalds have several kiosks. There is usually little or no line. I can place my order grab a table.

[xigoi]

> I can walk up to the counter and say "Big Mac Large Fry Small Coke"

In what culture is it normal to just state your order without greeting or saying “please”? You also didn’t include the time taken squinting at the menu and trying to figure out what you can even order.

[ninkendo]

Since you asked, and since I take my kids to the McDonald’s play place some weekends, and I’ve actually spent a bit of time pondering my ideal kiosk UI and what I don’t like about theirs:

It seems designed to maximize how many screens they show you to make an order. Each one with a slight delay and animation.

At a drive through I can say “gimme a number one, medium, with a Coke Zero” and they give me my total. That’s the convenience the kiosk is up against.

At the kiosk there’s:

- A welcome screen you have to tap

- A “carry out or dine in” screen

- Always one other screen with a dumb question about apps or whatever, tap through

- A top level menu with a bunch of categories, burgers, drinks, sides, desserts, etc… I guess I want burgers? But it’s a combo, hmm. I guess I’ll figure out how to make it a meal. Tap burgers.

- Then another screen with burgers, in a different order than the drive through numbering, tap Big Mac

- Then another dedicated screen to shows you a picture of a Big Mac, with a bunch of customization options, which you have to scroll past and verify that it matches the defaults you expect, and at the bottom you can tap add

- Then another screen asking you if you want to make it a meal

- Then another screen asking the size

- Then another screen asking what to drink

- Then another screen that shows you the drink

- Then another screen for what size

Etc etc etc. Each of these screens takes a few seconds to display too, just slow enough to be infuriating.

In my mind the ideal kiosk is something where you get “the menu” (like what you see on the billboard in the drive through) with the usual big squares with a number on them and a picture of the meal. Tapping one puts it in a “drawer” section with my order in it, and each item in the drawer can have simple in-line edit controls for “size” and “what to drink”, with them showing up empty in a way that makes it obvious I need to fill in those answers before I can check out.

I should be able to tap one button for the combo number I want, another for the size, another for the drink, then checkout, all on one screen without long delays. If I don’t want a combo but want individual items, I can just scroll down a bit to look at the full menu. The order drawer stays where it is.

Or hell, just let me say “number one with a Coke” and have a very simple ASR and NL parser figure it out and put it in my pending order to edit.

Customizations can be behind a simple “customize” button on each item in my pending order. If I don’t have customizations I can just ignore it. What you get with no customizations is what you’d get if you just order it verbally to a human without specifying anything. The concept of “here’s how we typically make it, if you want anything different let us know” is a very deeply ingrained and familiar concept to restaurant patrons, and being forced to answer every little question even if you don’t care, adds up to a lot of frustration.

Fast food places came up with the combo numbering system to make ordering faster, and it was super convenient and fast, because there’s a financial incentive to get you through the drive through because you’re blocking other customers. But since they have several kiosks available, they seem to not care at all about the efficiency of the user interface, because it’s not a problem for them. But it’s still a problem for me, because I still want to order quickly, despite it not blocking other customers. It’s a huge step down from just saying “number one with a Coke”.