Next they’ll come for the liquidator. The Burger King on the NYS thruway north of nyc went to touchscreen ordering. Everyone refuses to use it and there is one long line going to the one register that remained.
It also helps that the devices are pretty responsive, and allow you to order everything.
The downside is that I often see older people struggle with it, I guess for them it would be easier to talk to a human.
I suppose I am the opposite. I enjoy attempting to order food in a tongue I am learning. But going through the process with a native English speaker, I'd rather just push a button on the kiosk.
I suppose all this was extensively play-tested, but I have no idea what sort of person play tested it given the result.
[EDIT] My experience is muddling through the process once the first time I saw one just to see what it was like, but it definitely took several times as long as just walking up and ordering (and all I ordered was a coffee), and watching my wife try to use one on a family trip, spend about ~2x as long as it would have taken to just order at the counter, curse at it, give up, walk over and order at the counter.
This last week I noticed the UI had some major improvements and was ultra snappy.
I expect they took user feedback and are slow rolling a version 2.0.
Another problem is that guided access isn't always active on the iPads, meaning you can go to different apps and potentially change settings around. Since most jailbreaks these days are just apps, an attacker could go to safari and download a jailbreak app signed with an enterprise certificate and have a (tethered) exploit potentially stealing anything from panerabread.com passwords to credit cards.
It takes a TON of work to get the menus+availability, payments, local tax laws, security/privacy right for specific regions. Menus are not a solved problem - think about the case where a user wants a fillet o'fish, but hold the sauce and the top bun. Is the fillet o'fish the same item in the US as in Japan, even? What about other regional items? etc.
Also - McDonald's is run by McDonald's corporate and Franchisee's. Sometimes, corporate has the buying power, but most of the time, it's the individual franchisees that make the buy decision - for even things like mobile apps and ordering. Many times, restaurant brands you see here in the US, when traveling, are owned and operated by completely different sets of corporate beings.
Maybe we can start making public touchscreens out of brass...
https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/28/poo-found-on-every-mcdonalds-...
Traces of faeces have been found on every single McDonald’s touchscreen swabbed in an investigation by metro.co.uk. Samples were taken from the new machines that have been rolled out at restaurants across the country – every one of them had coliforms.
Senior lecturer in microbiology at London Metropolitan University Dr Paul Matewele said: ‘We were all surprised how much gut and faecal bacteria there was on the touchscreen machines. These cause the kind of infections that people pick up in hospitals.
Did they swab the food bags and food that came out as well? Poo particles are probably everywhere.
Either it's simply not true, or it is true and it doesn't matter.
I used them a couple of times at different places. It’s just too slow, which is magnified by the dark patterns trying to get you to buy meal deals or whatever.
I was really surprised, honestly I was expecting the process to be better than the usual.
It's so much nicer to be able to take your time, actually view the menu and costs of items, and choose what you want to eat without a line of hungry people waiting behind you.
Brick & mortar kiosks are the DVD Netflix of fast food.