Out: USPS checkout design

A thoughtless use of primary & secondary buttons

Last week I went to the US Post Office to send in my passport for renewal. While checking out, I made an error: I selected the wrong option on the screen. This meant the checkout process had to be reset and I had to start from the beginning. The funny thing was, since I was only 2 questions in when this happened, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if the clerk behind the counter didn’t take it so much in stride. She had a whole ritual for it, as if she’d delivered her speech 10,000 times.

“Okay, you answered ‘yes’ to question 2, so we’re going to restart the process and do it again. This time, press ‘no’ to question 2.”

“Do people do that a lot?”

“All the time.”

What’s being judged here

When checking out, the user interface looked like the following (not my photo).

I was primarily interacting with the touch screen portion, so we’ll ignore the keypad. I wish I’d taken photos of the screen, but since I didn’t, let me recreate them.

Here’s the first one…

(I put a placeholder where the words were)

This is an easy “Yes.” No one reads this stuff.

And the second screen, an identical design…

And this is where I accidentally pressed “Yes.”

What’s the problem here?

The correct answer on the second screen is “No.” But it’s designed like a secondary button. The problem is the secondary button design signals to the user based on every pattern they are using on their phones and computers that this isn’t the primary path.

“Well, I’m here to mail something, just like everyone else who comes here,” the user thinks subconsciously, “so obviously I’m pressing ‘Yes.’”

Well, too bad! Because now you’ve just told the USPS that you shouldn’t be allowed to mail something. And now you have to start over.

The verdict

This is an “Out” for me.

I also noticed that the clerk asked me, verbally, if I had any firearms, bad batteries, etc, before I went through the screens. So when I hit the wrong answer, she knew I’d made a mistake and could quickly reset it — without any worry of her having directed my response. I wonder if she’s added this to her process intentionally. It would be even more time consuming if she didn’t have my verbal response.

“Wait, do you have flammables or not?”

“No!”

“But you said you did…”

It’s a bad pattern here. I’m not surprised that she told me it happens all the time.

Imagine how much time is wasted, over the course of a year, because of users making this predictable error.

And when I was at the USPS, there was 1 clerk handling every customer who walked in. Wasting time is even more of a problem, when the office is understaffed.

Quick redesign

Here’s my initial pass at a redesign of this screen.

Make “No” the primary path.

However, I could imagine the concern might be the USPS doesn’t want to direct the user too much — doesn’t want them answering questions like a zombie. Are they intentionally trying to trip users up to get real responses?

I’m not sure. But even if they are wanting more mindful answers, I’d still advise a change. Make the design like this…

Don’t suggest a primary path at all.