[Morendil]

As far as I can tell France universally uses "Flow A" (get your card back first, then your cash). When I started using ATMs, in the late 80s, I remember that "Flow A" and "Flow B" were about equally common, then in a relatively short span of time all the banks switched to A.

It surprises me, reading about it now, that it could be different in any other part of the world. That Flow A is the correct solution is not obvious, but it should be obvious to anyone who's studied human behavior and human error, which should be anyone involved in the design of ATMs. The form of "goal fixation" Jenny mentions is a very common pattern in human errors.

[explorerjenny]

I just learned (thanks to James Arlen who commented directly under the blogpost), that Flow B was really useful when ATMs first showed up in the mid-80s, because people mostly made more than one transaction. They quite often made deposits and a withdrawal within one process and for each action the machine had to read the card. Therefore, it made sense that the machine kept the card till the moment when every single action was finished. But this isn’t a common pattern any longer and the flow should change in a way that makes more sense nowadays.

[systoll]

It surprises me that a flattened out workflow like http://i.ytimg.com/vi/luu3_y2MWGQ/maxresdefault.jpg isn't widely used. There's a very strong 'default' use of an ATM, and the conventional workflow does not optimize for it at all.

[keeperofdakeys]

My bank switched to this layout recently, and it took me a good minute to work out what was going on, and how I should go about getting my money out. It might not have been so bad if I had just read the screen though, but I was trying to find the normal menus.

[manume]

I guess a machine like an ATM has be usable by 100% of the population, including people who get easily confused by more than two options/buttons, so usability has to be sacrificed for simplicity to a certain degree.

[Grue3]

It's not obvious. The user might want do something else with the card even after withdrawing the money. The money are not necessarily the "goal". This is coming from someone living in a country where flow A is the most common.

[fermigier]

This incident happened to my grandfather in France 30 years ago (mid 80s), at an ATM using "Flow B". A few months later the ATM was changed to use "Flow A" instead and I have never used a single ATM using "Flow B" since I have been in age of using a credit card myself.

I'm really puzzled that someone is still designing "Flow B" type ATMs these days (unless its a 80s model that they bought at a yard sale...).

[gpvos]

The Netherlands uses flow A everywhere as far as I can tell, while Belgium seems to use a mix of both.