Accessibility Product Design: Making Vending Machines Work for Blind Customers

You are a product manager asked to design a vending machine that people who are blind can use. Decide exactly who you are designing for, find where the usual vending purchase breaks down without sight, propose and prioritize solutions, and explain how you would judge whether the design works. ```hint Follow one purchase Walk through every step of buying from an ordinary vending machine, from locating it to walking away with the item, and mark each point where the buyer depends on seeing something. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What does the machine sell and where will it stand: packaged snacks and drinks in an office or a station, or something else? - Must the same machine keep serving sighted customers, or is it a dedicated unit? - Which users are in scope: only people with no usable vision, or also people with low vision, and can we assume they can hear and speak? - Which payment methods must it accept: cash, cards, contactless or phone wallets? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Scope settled up front: the setting, what is sold, how much vision loss is in scope, and whether sighted buyers share the machine - The purchase broken into stages, each tied to the visual cue it relies on and ranked by how badly its absence blocks a blind buyer - Several options for the biggest gaps, compared on explicit criteria and narrowed to a defined first version - The operator's side: who pays for the added capability, and what it takes to keep it working - A primary success metric with guardrails, and the main risks with mitigations ### Follow-up Questions - How would you test the concept with blind users before committing to new hardware? - What changes if the buyer is both blind and deaf? - Why would a vending operator buy this machine, and how would you make that case?