Inspite of the efforts made in establishing a working definition, Service Design is still quite difficult to define let alone convince others that it's real and that there are really poor interaction designs in the consumer service space out there. During a recent trip down South, my wife and I stopped for a meal at a nearby restaurant. The food was good and everything went well until we got handed the bill. I couldn't believe what I saw and for a moment, couldn't grasp why or how the sandwiches and glasses of water we had cost $80. After a few seconds, I realized that the problem was in the way the receipt was designed. Normally, the receipts or invoices I see emphasize on the total amount by making it either a bigger font, bolding it or both. On the contrary, this one puts the emphasis on the change and not the total -- a reverse of what is common and a confusing one at that especially since the font used for the total is extremely dwarfed by the one used for the change. To top it off, when I mentioned this issue to the manager, what I was told was that they never had complaints about it from their customers and it's just a matter of getting used to. Perhaps most of their customers are not as obsessive like me but isn't this a real enough UX issue that needs addressing?
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