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I’m going to assume you are talking about retail since you describe card-present transactions. Retail is hard. Surprisingly genuinely hard. When you have hundr

by zxcmx 8y ago

I’m going to assume you are talking about retail since you describe card-present transactions. Retail is hard. Surprisingly genuinely hard. When you have hundreds or thousands of outlets, some of them are special, you have wacky hardware, stuff is potentially updated over WAN, you often have a varied hardware fleet, retraining hundreds or thousands of operators is damn near impossible, your stuff was stuck together with sticky tape in the first place and meanwhile the customer is in the reps face tapping their feet or walking out on a sale because “the new system is acting up”. There are a lot of orgs eating a ton of risk on the retail end just because the problem is so messy and expensive to fix.

Rjevski 8y ago
Yep I am talking about retail! > you have wacky hardware They were using standard desktop PCs, not sure what you mean by that. > stuff is potentially updated over WAN They had a Cisco router in the shop that VPN'ed back to the mothership, so as far as the computers are concerned they were all on one big LAN and don't have to worry about its security (as long as the VPN is configured correctly - which for such a company is a quite a big if). > retraining hundreds or thousands of operators is damn near impossible Make the web app intuitive enough to not require any training? Strangely, I never hear people needing any "training" to use the latest Facebook or Snapchat - maybe the real answer is to actually hire a competent UX designer? > your stuff was stuck together with sticky tape in the first place True, but then again this problem needs to be solved. Putting tons of customers at risk and praying that they don't get compromised is unacceptable. > the new system is acting up I am not sure if they can do worse than the old system. It was routinely throwing Java stack traces all over the place (from the server) filled with confidential info. Not to mention, none of this excuses having outdated IE, Java & Flash, and unrestricted outbound internet access on those machines.
- laumars 8y ago
  > Make the web app intuitive enough to not require any training? Strangely, I never hear people needing any "training" to use the latest Facebook or Snapchat - maybe the real answer is to actually hire a competent UX designer? Facebook has a terrible UI and I'd wager the majority of people who use it aren't aware of half the hidden features on there. In fact I can think of 4 occasions just off the top of the head where that's happened (wife couldn't find the option to share a FB group URL, people not finding options to subscribe or unsubscribe from a particular discussion, I can never find the damn "report this comment to a moderator" option in FB groups when I need it). As for Snapchat, that app hardly compares to the level of complexity that a typical POS system would need. Most importantly though, I don't really want to be the unlucky guy who has to wait there patiently while a member of staff guesses their way through a transaction. Let alone deal with the hassle of escalating things to a manager when said staff inevitably makes a mistake due to a lack of training.

by zxcmx 8y ago

Rjevski 8y ago

Yep I am talking about retail! > you have wacky hardware They were using standard desktop PCs, not sure what you mean by that. > stuff is potentially updated over WAN They had a Cisco router in the shop that VPN'ed back to the mothership, so as far as the computers are concerned they were all on one big LAN and don't have to worry about its security (as long as the VPN is configured correctly - which for such a company is a quite a big if). > retraining hundreds or thousands of operators is damn near impossible Make the web app intuitive enough to not require any training? Strangely, I never hear people needing any "training" to use the latest Facebook or Snapchat - maybe the real answer is to actually hire a competent UX designer? > your stuff was stuck together with sticky tape in the first place True, but then again this problem needs to be solved. Putting tons of customers at risk and praying that they don't get compromised is unacceptable. > the new system is acting up I am not sure if they can do worse than the old system. It was routinely throwing Java stack traces all over the place (from the server) filled with confidential info. Not to mention, none of this excuses having outdated IE, Java & Flash, and unrestricted outbound internet access on those machines.

laumars 8y ago
> Make the web app intuitive enough to not require any training? Strangely, I never hear people needing any "training" to use the latest Facebook or Snapchat - maybe the real answer is to actually hire a competent UX designer? Facebook has a terrible UI and I'd wager the majority of people who use it aren't aware of half the hidden features on there. In fact I can think of 4 occasions just off the top of the head where that's happened (wife couldn't find the option to share a FB group URL, people not finding options to subscribe or unsubscribe from a particular discussion, I can never find the damn "report this comment to a moderator" option in FB groups when I need it). As for Snapchat, that app hardly compares to the level of complexity that a typical POS system would need. Most importantly though, I don't really want to be the unlucky guy who has to wait there patiently while a member of staff guesses their way through a transaction. Let alone deal with the hassle of escalating things to a manager when said staff inevitably makes a mistake due to a lack of training.