MovieCube is unusable
I've been a fan of DVD rental kiosks for quite a while. They allow for the spontaneity that is lost with Netflix, my practice of returning the movie the next day is rewarded with cheap prices, and the retrieval/vending hardware is called the "Robot". What's not to like?
My neighborhood grocery store changed kiosk vendors from TheDVDConnection to MovieCube (a giant in the market). I walked away empty-handed from the kiosk last night following a horrible user experience!
Every single rule of interface design is broken. I'll start with the landing screen. I don't have screenshots, but the layout is like this:
,___________________________________________________ | *Category* *Buttons* *Up* *Here* | |--------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |--------------------------------------------------| | |-------. |-------. | | |__Eng__| |__Esp__| | `---------------------------------------------------
With very small buttons, yet the center of the screen is completely blank!
Clicking a category, say "New Releases", results in a progress bar that lasts no less than 10 seconds!
,___________________________________________________ | *Category* *Buttons* *Up* *Here* | |--------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----------+ | | |Processing| | | | xxx----- | | | +----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |--------------------------------------------------| | |-------. |-------. | | |__Eng__| |__Esp__| | `---------------------------------------------------
Come on. YOU"RE FILLING AN ARRAY. This is repeated for every category selection, including the case where you click the button for the category you're already on. There's no possible rationale for performance this bad. If you're connecting to the network for some reason, shame on you. And not caching whatever hardcore algorithms are needed to assemble a paged list of movies, double shame.
Now the movies appear in a paged list, a nice two-column layout with thumbnails.
,___________________________________________________ | *Category* *Buttons* *Up* *Here* | |--------------------------------------------------| | New Releases | | ____ ____ | | | | | | | | | | Borat | | La Mujer | | | | | | | | '----' '----' | | ____ ____ | | <<< | | | | >>> | | | | Saw XXI | | Pirates! | | | | | | | | '----' '----' | | ____ ____ | | | | | | | | | | El Oso | | Fuego Fuego | | | | | | | | '----' '----' | | | |--------------------------------------------------| | |-------. |-------. | | |__Eng__| |__Esp__| | `---------------------------------------------------
At this point, so many things are wrong:
- Borat isn't a new release.
- Half the movies shown are Spanish-language titles, even though I pressed the "English" button. I can appreciate that the language of the interface and the language of the movie are two different things, but Joe User doesn't understand that. Offer the user a way to filter based on movie language, and make it clear that the existing "English" and "Spanish" buttons don't do this.
- There's no one-line description of the movie. Come on, just a sentence, it really does help.
- The paging function ... well ...
- There's no "Page 1 of 7" indicator. You must scroll every page to know how many "New Releases" there are.
- The paging buttons (left and right arrows) neither disable for impossible actions, nor cycle to the other end of the list. In other words, if I'm on Page One, then either the "Page Back" button should disable, or it should cycle me to the last page of results. Nope. It just reloads page one again (incredibly I'm spared the 10-second progress bar in this case).
After all this fighting with the interface, it turns out that the selection is tiny and poor. I walk away. After years of resisting, I'm joining Netflix today.
MovieCube, don't hire the CEO's nephew to do your interface design. "Trevor, he's good with computers!"