Smart Passports

Melbourne airport has some really smart technology that can speed up getting through passport control.

The process is, open your passport to your photo page, place it upside down on the scanner, the scanner then sucks it in and process your data, the machine then returns your passport, you then take the passport a little gate opens and you proceed to where your face is photographed and compared with the digital images and your profile.

It can be a little stressful and anxious in these areas of the airport and I'm sure this is why Katie was
distracted and flustered.

I went first and had no issues, thinking in the back of my mind, could get rejected as my passport photo does not have a beard.

I then, as a good husband should, waited just past the screening gate and watched Katie place her passport in the scanner and then wait, she waited for a while, the people behind appeared to get pushy also, but she waited patiently, but the little gate wouldn't open giving her access to the next section.  I wanted to go back through and see what was wrong but, once I had passed my screening I couldn't return. 
There are Border Protection officers who oversee this process and thankfully the lovely girl realised Katie's mistake, she had mistakenly left the passport in the reader, thinking it is like a ticket machine at the train station that would send the passport through as she passed the gate.

Thankfuly after removing her passport the gate opened for Katie and she was able to proceed to the nextion section for facial scanning.

It is little things like this that often get overlooked in testing new systems and often real users, real people with no technical background are used to test. Little things like this could be resolved if the machine simply spoke, or we could even replace the machine with a human simplifying the process further.

(sorry for no pictures, but photography is banned in this section of the airport)