Does my soda fountain need to be this complex?

I encountered this soda fountain yesterday in my regular travels. When I first went to fill my cup, I selected Coke, then Cherry Coke. It said, "Choose another selection." Um. OK. Why did you offer me the icon for cherry coke if you don't have it? I understand that when the analog Cherry Coke fountain runs out of syrup or whatever, it's over, you just have to taste it to know. But at least I recognize that. In this case, I'm sitting there thinking "OK, if you show me the icon, darnit, I want to be able to use the icon."

The soda fountain person spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to not only refill the cherry flavor cartridge but also how to make the machine realize that, while it was sleeping, the cherry cartridge had been replaced. This was a little harder than it might seem to be.

One of the soda brands offered on the screen is "Dasani." Dasani is "water." Dasani is actually specially filtered water, right? Do they have a special water filter in the machine, or is this really just tap water? I asked the guy, and he wouldn't say, his eyes got all glassy and he just sort of wandered off.

I can predict what's going to happen here. Eventually they will stop buying flavor cartridges, and eventually people will have to hunt around five or six screens to find even the main brand of drink they're looking for. This is fine because it is the way of things.

But it is kind of nifty looking, and I got a chance to see the operating system. I think they are using a linux backend on an embedded XHTML-based front end but don't quote me on that.

I do know that clicks are being counted. So, in a while, Coca-Cola will have market research live, direct from tens of thousands of locations, as to what people actually prefer to drink given their druthers.

For myself, I'd rather just have Cherry Coke. And I did, eventually, once the machine realized that it was cherry-full again.

It didn't taste like Cherry Coke, which is a bit of a blended flavor. It tasted like regular coke with some kind of generic cherry flavor added.

Oh, and by the way, somebody needs to tell the designer of this thing that the ice flows down into the trough and then out onto the floor and gets all over everything. This is suboptimal for people who don't want to slip and fall.

Ah well, at least its innovative!

• 

  By Sarah, October 7, 2009 @ 6:41 pm

  I'm boycotting Coke til they bring VanillaCoke back to Canada.

• 

  By Hope, October 9, 2009 @ 4:20 pm

  I don't actually recall Vanilla Coke, but I could very well have missed it.

  I'm reminded of a quote from Invader Zim.

  Zim: "Is it supposed to be ... stupid?"
  Tallest: "It's not stupid! It's advanced!"

Other Links to this Post