Over two three years ago, I had written a post sharing my experiences on using Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and the inherent need for a fresh user interaction model for ATMs. Roughly around the same time, Well’s Fargo, a diversified financial services company headquartered at San Fransisco with worldwide operations, commissioned Pentagram to work on new User Interfaces for their 7000 ATMs.

Holger Struppek, an ex-Pentagrammer, shares some of their experiences on working on the interfaces. One of the features that I had envisioned back then was a single click cash dispensing option that suggests an amount based on the user’s transaction history. Its good to learn that this feature has been adopted in Pentagram’s work -

A great feature of the Wells Fargo ATM UI has always been the Quick Cash button. It allows you to quickly withdraw $40 from your checking account with the press of one button. There is no need to go through the steps of selecting an account, selecting an amount, and confirming the transaction. However, few people knew that this feature could be customized with a different amount and account.

The article talks about the research, decision on using grid-based visual design, color palette, user testing and other stuff that went in to redefining the ATM interface design paradigm.

I’m not a big fan of forwards, but I do enjoy reading some really thoughtful ones, like the one that follows..

Enjoy the Coffee.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: ‘If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other’s cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn’t change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.’

Don’t let the cups drive you. Enjoy the coffee instead!

Barack Obama finally wins and is now officially, the Democrat nominee for this year’s Presidential elections. Mr. Obama’s triumph closed a 16-month primary campaign that, as the New York Times reports, “broke records on several fronts: the number of voters who participated, the amount of money raised and spent and the sheer length of the fight. The campaign, infused by tensions over race and gender, provided unexpected twists to the end as Mr. Obama ultimately prevailed over Mrs. Clinton, who just a year ago appeared headed toward becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major party.”

The New York Times also published an interesting photo feature titled ‘Who is Barack Obama?‘ which gives some insight to the man who might well be, the next president of the United States.