Thoughtless Acts

Description

Document a thoughtless act and propose design solutions.

What

Thoughtless acts are the way we humans react to or co-opt our environments in unconscious ways.  The thoughtless act I have chosen to document is one of my favorites.

Every time I drive back to Berkeley from the South Bay, I like to stop at a particular Valero gas station to get gasoline for my car because it has the cheapest prices around if you pay in cash.  I have been pumping my own gasoline for years and am quite familiar with the process, but the pumps at this station have a few "false buttons" which have often tricked me into pressing them rather than pressing the genuine octane selection buttons.

Here is a picture of the gas pump:

And here's a close-up of the regular unleaded octane marker:

Why

As you can see, there is a marker above the price per gallon of each octane grade which customers (including yours truly) have mistakenly pressed instead of the bright yellow PRESS  HERE button below it, evidenced by their wear and fading.  What's surprising about this thoughtless act is that the selection button is clearly labeled, bright yellow, and has those extra blue and white arrows pointing to it.  And yet still patrons persist in pressing the wrong button.  What's going on?

First, the raised plastic beveling around the marker makes it appear as if it is special.  If there were a way to say 'press me, I'm a button!' without words, that would be it, and the customers at that gas station apparently agree.  Secondly, the wearing of the sticker serves as a second unconscious reinforcer to press the wrong part of the pump.  Thirdly, and this may be a stretch, that false button appears above the actual button and as top-to-bottom English language readers, we assume that the first thing that we visually encounter that looks like a button, must be the button we want.

Design Solutions

The easiest way to fix this design problem is to make the label flat and flush with the rest of the surface of the gas pump.  I think this would probably be sufficient to dissuade people from pushing the label instead of the actual button.  If you wanted to go further than that, I would suggest making the selection button more button-like.  Maybe like this:

(from:  http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/nj_gas_stations_offer_cheaper.html)