Apocalypse of the ATM

Ms. Liang Ning, Lenovo and Tencent executive and CNET Group Vice President had an extremely inspiring case study of an ATM when she joined Tencent. If you were asked to design an ATM, what functions would you focus on? Is it just buttons and interfaces to accomplish the core business of accessing money? And how much resources and costs behind this need to be matched?
 

ATMs provide cash withdrawal services with a variety of explicit features, such as screen color, the order in which cards appear, and camera position. However, the amount of cash placed at the ATM and its management becomes an important part of its core service, as banks need to place a large amount of cash externally for the ATM to use, which is one of their core resources.
 

The bank needs to ensure that the use of this core resource is valuable and part of providing a complete service is to keep this huge amount of cash circulating in the shortest possible time to ensure maximum benefit.
 

What are the specific departments and people needed to support this?

First, a strategic department is needed to determine the strategic value of introducing ATMs, which can range from placing them next to the bank to ease the pressure on window traffic to placing them in high-traffic areas for convenience and to increase corporate exposure and brand intimacy.

Below the operations department, it is necessary to set up ATM distribution outlets and report data for each ATM, such as daily cash withdrawals. If a location has very few cash withdrawals per day, it means that the location has low foot traffic does not fulfill the need for corporate brand exposure, and needs to be withdrawn and considered for placement elsewhere.

In terms of ATM operations and maintenance, hardware management is required, which includes maintaining ATMs in proper operating condition, such as power outages, hardware failures, and printing paper and ink for voucher machines. Customer service support is also required to deal with problems encountered by users, such as swallowed cards and wrong banknotes.

The entire operational process requires at least seven positions behind the scenes to provide various services, even though the user simply enters an ID to withdraw money. Therefore, costs need to be considered when designing ATMs, including the cost of the ATM itself and the cost of the seven positions to provide services continuously.
 
Thus, the ATM, as the simplest product, needs to meet strategic requirements, provide services on an ongoing basis, and budget for costs effectively. Stand-alone products are meaningless; the key is to provide a consistent, same quality of service and to do so consistently at a cost that can be covered.
 
In other industry sectors, it is also necessary to consider the issue of users being able to consistently receive the same quality of products and services, and how to provide them consistently at a cost-coverable level.
 
This example from Mr. Liang Ning is very inspiring, but as Mr. Liang said, an ATM is still a simple product, because the target users of money are all people, regardless of men, women, and children, and do not need to pay attention to user profiling and population distribution. And most products can only focus on and serve a certain group.
 

Product design can not just look at the surface, but also consider the organizational costs.
 
In product design, we often focus most of our attention on product appearance and functionality, while ignoring the organization and cost behind it.

However, a good product not only needs to meet user needs but also needs to consider organizational efficiency and cost control.

Organization is the core of successful product design. A good product design not only meets customer needs in terms of appearance and functionality, but also improves efficiency and reduces costs in terms of organization.
 
A good organizational design can reduce unnecessary duplication of effort and workload and avoid waste of manpower and resources. For example, through rational process design and automation technology, productivity and quality can be improved, costs can be reduced, and product competitiveness can be increased.
 
An efficient organization also has a positive impact on user experience. This is because good product design helps to improve the efficiency of the organization, which leads to faster and more accurate customer response. When product design and organizational structure work well together, products are delivered in less time and with fewer errors, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.
 
Product managers should consider all aspects of the product, including organizational costs, in the product design. To design high-quality products, product managers must be very familiar with organizational costs and efficiencies. In the early stages of product planning, the product manager should understand the organizational structure and cost of the product to better provide value to the product. In addition, the product manager should always keep an eye on the interactions between upstream and downstream organizations to ensure a smooth progression of processes and information.

We cannot ignore organizational design in product design. A great product not only meets customer needs in terms of appearance and functionality, but also improves efficiency and reduces costs in terms of organizational design. This design not only helps to reduce internal costs but also improves customer satisfaction, product quality, and competitiveness.
 
In the process of product design, we need to comprehensively consider the product's attributes, target users, usage scenarios, and efficiency. These factors are closely related and interact with each other, and are critical to achieving product success.
 
In product design, it is crucial to understand the needs and expectations of target users. Through in-depth analysis of user groups and collection of user feedback and suggestions, we can better understand their preferences and behavioral habits.
 
 Based on these data, we can adjust the attributes and functions of our products to better match user needs and increase user satisfaction. For example, Apple has successfully attracted a large number of loyal users by creating user-friendly user interfaces and smartphone features through an in-depth study of users' habits and needs.
 
Users use products in different scenarios, so product design should fully consider these different scenario needs. A successful product should be able to adapt to different environments and provide a good user experience.
 
For example, Google Maps can provide the best route according to the traffic conditions during the navigation process, thus ensuring that users can reach their destinations smoothly in a busy city. Contextualized design enhances users' dependence on and satisfaction with the product.
 
Efficiency is a crucial aspect of product design. An efficient product can help users accomplish tasks more easily and increase productivity.
  
For example, Microsoft's Office suite provides fast and efficient tools to help users handle office tasks more effectively, saving time and energy. In product design, we should reduce unnecessary steps and operations, simplify the process and improve the efficiency of users.
 
Successful product design requires comprehensive consideration of product attributes, users, scenarios, and efficiency. Only by excelling in all of these areas can we meet user needs, provide an excellent user experience, and improve the competitiveness of our products.
 
In the design process, we should listen to the voices of users, pay attention to user feedback, and continuously optimize the product in pursuit of better user experience and efficiency.
 
With the development of technology, more and more users choose online payment, while offline banking has some problems. A few days ago, I wanted to deposit cash into my bank card account. I went to a nearby bank ATM and started the deposit process. However, the ATM malfunctioned at the mouth and swallowed my thousands dollars.
 
I immediately went to the bank for help and was told that the process would take a week. I was surprised because even after depositing money on a weekend, it still had not been processed in a week, saying that I needed a fingerprint to open the ATM. Users in the bank are also few and far between, so it's no wonder that problems with ATMs don't affect them, after all, most people don't need to access their money. I also realized that the inefficiency of the bank's processing process would likely damage the bank's reputation. After 4 trips to the bank to urge processing, my money was claimed and I had to sign and fill out information before depositing the money.
 
This situation is very familiar to many customers: users want to be in charge of accessing their money items at ATMs, yet still need to go through a lot of paperwork. In contrast, the advent of online payment methods has greatly simplified these problems.
 
Users can do this anytime, anywhere, avoiding red tape and the risk of ATMs swallowing their cards. In addition, online payment methods also allow users to better control their funds. You can check your balance, spending details, account changes, etc. promptly, which is becoming more and more popular among customers.
  
Product design needs to keep up with environmental changes to better meet users' needs. Against the backdrop of the current technological advances, where more and more users are opting for online payments, banking needs to make adjustments in this direction.
  
If banks wish to retain customers, they must enhance the unity of online and offline services to improve customer experience and efficiency.
 
Talking from the ATM, I talked a bit about my understanding of the product and shared one of my experiences of saving money, hoping to bring a bit of inspiration.