In Which the Author Fails at the ATM

Yesterday I was using a Bank of America ATM for the first time, and it has a card-swiping thing where the user is supposed to put the card in and then pull it back out. Now, I didn't realize this, so I just put my card in and then got confused when the system wouldn't start.

Here's the rub: the ATM had two cues on how to swipe the card. One was a tiny, bi-directional arrow on the mouth of the card slot, which I actually saw and didn't correctly interpret (I thought it was just an arrow indicating where to put my card). The other was the ATM splash screen, which had a photo of a smiling woman taking up 3/4ths of the screen and then the sentence "Insert and remove your card to begin" taking up the lower part.

The designers probably thought that sentence would be sufficient to explain to the users how to swipe. But the problem here is that my focus wasn't on the screen at first, because I'm used to ignoring the splash screen and starting the process by swiping my card. My visual attention was completely on the card slot, and I didn't even see the helpful instruction.

When I talk to non-designers about various interaction problems, a suggestion that I often hear is that "it should be labeled better." But I think this is a good example of how labeling is often not enough to correctly guide the user.