Saturday, February 3, 2007

Chaos At Kiosk

Hi Tester,
This post is going to be interesting to you, especially if you are in Bangalore. Curious?

Electronic Kiosk= a computer terminal which employs a custom software and allows users to access system functions. .

In Bangalore people have a facility to pay their monthly electricity bill at a Kiosk. The machine scans your bar- coded bill and displays the amount to be paid on a screen. Then you will have to feed the currency notes through a scanner which scans the currency for its denomination and accepts it. After the completion of the transaction, a receipt pops out with a message "Transaction complete" on the display. This is how a Kiosk normally works.

Yesterday, it so happened that I went to the Kiosk to pay my monthly electricity bill. It was my first visit to the place and while waiting for my turn in the queue I was observing the machine work(exploring). My turn came and I followed the procedures:-
  • I showed the bill under the scanner and the amount (Rs.1500)to be paid got displayed on the screen.
  • I started to feed the machine with the currency notes one by one(1*1000+1*500=1500) it displayed the denominations and accepted the currency notes after scanning them.
  • It prompted a message"Transaction complete" and the receipt popped out.
Suddenly the tester in me got curious about the machine and he(I) decided to utilize the opportunity and ran a simple yet revealing test on the Kiosk. I repeated the usual procedure and this time instead of feeding currency I fed the Kiosk with a piece of plain paper.
Ah! success, the plain piece of paper got scanned and was accepted by the machine. The moment the paper piece went in, the machine freezed and it did not respond to any further commands.

Then, I :-
  • tried scanning the bill again.
  • tried scanning other's bill.
  • tried feeding currency notes of various denominations.
  • ........
But nothing seemed to work and it became clear that I had wrecked the Kiosk. People who were standing behind me in the queue started to grumble and gave me a piercing look. I felt sorry for them but I was happy, that I found a major bug(at least to me) in the system which was widely used by the public. Some of you may feel that I caused discomfort to the public but I am contented that I had lighted one of the dark corners of the product which might gain some attention by my action. I came back home hoping that this bug gets reported and fixed by the concerned people.

____________End Of Chaos At Kiosk_______________
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Though it might have been an interesting test, I do have a couple of comments:

1) One of the key things in testing is challenging assumptions. Instead of hoping that the bug gets reported and fixed, it might have been better if you would have reported the bug properly in the complaint register/ similar mechanism that should be available at kiosks/ ATMs/ similar machines. If such a mechanism were not available, you could have filed a detailed written complaint with the security personnel deployed at the kiosk.

2) Another thing that we should avoid is running tests in production environments. This is especially true of tests that have the potential of seriously disrupting the services to the customers. If such a test is run, then the concerned people should be available at hand to undo the steps of the test/ reset the system and make the system operational again quickly.

Nevertheless, I think that your test would have brought to light the problem that otherwise might have been overlooked for some time to come.

Inder P Singh

November 16, 2008 at 9:42 AM

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