Somehow, it was simpler and cheaper to install a touchscreen, display an image of a finger touching a circle that contains a fingerprint, print a label that says “please get a ticket and go to the waiting room” than… just putting an obvious physical push button.
@thibaultamartin next it will be an AI agent spitting out a ticket because it predicted that you needed one, but it'll be some random number and letters not in any order which is unfortunate because the caller will be going in numerical order and they won't use letters. Oh and it'll cost $10 a month to keep that ticket service going.
@PetterOfCats @thibaultamartin …and it will display ads when nobody is poking.
@thibaultamartin maybe it will keep your fingerprint...
@thibaultamartin note that the text label was added, indicating that this system was confusing to users and needed a bodge fix

@Stellar @thibaultamartin Yeah, the fingerprint icon makes no damn sense from a UX perspective. I don't have any formal training, but my intuition (as someone who's been absolutely marinating in digital systems for two decades and counting) reads it as "press finger on fingerprint reader" followed by "where is the fingerprint reader?" (This is also why I hate the "under the glass" fingerprint readers on some phone models)

The most obvious improvement is simply remove the fingerprint graphic and have a plain blue button, or add "print ticket" to the button in place of the fingerprint. (I'd keep the finger itself though, I've seen enough "average users" to know it's probably necessary)

EDIT: Though the sticker is probably because "the device doesn't otherwise say what it's there for", so they needed to provide the additional context of "please take a ticket and wait for your number to be called" and couldn't figure out how to change the graphic.

@xjuan @thibaultamartin Note that depending on how things are physically arranged, they may need a "ticketing system" that integrates with a computer, at which point the touchscreen may unfortunately be "the best option" for something that needs to connect to a network. Especially if it's an off-the-shelf device they don't need to significantly customize.

I've been to an outpatient lab facility that had one of the mechanical ones before (originally as a covid-control measure, but stuck around as a "privacy control" to keep people away from the checkin desk while they were already talking to someone), and if the lady behind the desk didn't see you take a ticket, they wouldn't know to call your number.

Though the UX could really have been improved on the digital one in the post: remove the abstract fingerprint icon and replace it with a label of "Print Ticket" (I'd personally keep the finger, though) and put the label-maker text on the screen...

@becomethewaifu @thibaultamartin right but my point is that we and I include myself tend to over engineer things when lots of times there are simpler solutions
@thibaultamartin Mmm 50 billion transistors and all of the conflict minerals for a fucking button.