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The kiosks have a terrible UX, for one thing. Ordering a Big Mac value meal with a drink should take one or two actions, but for some reason it takes about 10.

Also last time I was at McDonalds the kiosks were displaying a Windows BSOD.

They might have terrible UX but the human cashier has even worse UX, especially if you want to customize your order, or want to know what customization are available.

What's so difficult about UX? You just need a machine with a bunch of buttons and a card reader. If someone wants an order not on the machine they can go to the sole cashier the restaurant has hired.

https://www.alamy.com/a-japanese-man-purchasing-a-meal-ticke...

My experiences with the kiosk at McD's have trained me to make the order there and then walk up to the counter to pay, because it would never let me pay at the kiosk. I like using it to order because it doesn't mishear me like the cashier usually does, so I also make bigger, more complex orders. But they do not have the full transaction worked out, last time I was there.

OTOH, I use the Starbucks online ordering all the time to have my order ready the moment I walk in. It let me feel like I was "getting out" during 2020 with minimal risk.

I prefer the kiosks, and when between equidistant McDs, choose the one whose kiosks are working. I'm pretty good with UIs, though, as a computer professional. Most of the people I see ignore them, and at two out of three locations near my house, they've been broken and down for months on end.

Plenty of McDonald's cashiers aren't great at using the POS, I don't know what we're expecting out of the average customer. 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate.

In all fairness... as someone who worked at McDonald's growing up just a decade or so ago, the POS was absolutely an awful experience at the time. Tons of very tiny images, similar colors, small text, prioritizing "meals" over individual items in lists. I wasn't particularly motivated to memorize the UI to make myself a more profitable wage slave either, of course, but I empathize with anybody who has to use that POS POS on a daily basis.

I'm not trying to be unfair, just audibly wondering why people think that the same people who can't design a UI that employees who spend 29 hours a week on can master are going to design a UI for people who spend 10 minutes on it a week.

'Same people' - citation needed.

UX has always been given short shrift when you can train someone to use it. When making it so trivial anyone can figure it out leads to reduced employee costs, you suddenly have a lot more incentive to get it right.

The kiosks work good for simple things. When it gets complicated though, sometimes the kiosk throws up its hands and escalates to a human attendant (self-checkout at grocery and home improvement stores are horrible at this). By the time the attendant tends to the machine, often more time has passed than just going to the human cashier. This trains people to avoid the kiosks.

Which is such a bad experience that the stores tend to tweak it to improve it.

I remember when grocery store checkout lines used to flag weight mismatches because the front door was open and it was a windy day. That particular chain has dialed them -way- back on their sensitivity; I think I need to flag an attendant down 1/100 times I use one?

But either way, that's handling payment of goods that aren't determined. A far harder problem than an order kiosk at McDonald's. -Those- are great, and yeah, I've never had a problem, even ordering very customized meals that many servers aren't even aware are possible (i.e., getting a burger lettuce wrapped).

Just my anecdotal experience but we've had the kiosks in Australia for a while now, and I've seen queues for a kiosk while there was a person waiting at the register with nothing to do... ...and I stood in the queue instead of going to the register...

I use kiosks, but they are slow and have dark patterns, so I can understand why people don't want to use them.

My experience with using computer ordering like kiosks and fast food apps is that you can easily make complex orders, but since the actual steps after involve humans you won’t actually get those orders.

Like, Starbuckses are usually out of more than half the things on their app. And lower end places are just going to ignore your requests.

For delivery that doesn’t even include the surprisingly high rate of the driver just giving you someone else’s order - I wonder who loses on the refund in that situation.

These kiosks miss very basic use cases. There's no equivalent to the verbal "can I have a (free) cup of water with the meal" on a McDonald's kiosk UI. You can purchase bottled water, however.