James Bowskill is a British Art Director at A.C.O. Tokyo, where he develops brands on-line.

He also collects Japanese packaging, occasionally writes articles for Tokyo's web magazine PingMag, and is a member of London design team Superblue.

ATM Interface: Security by Shuffle Dec 05 2005

Problem: Having your PIN guessed by someone watching your hand movements
Solution: Shuffle the layout so nobody knows what buttons you've pressed

Japan's Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank have a great idea for getting around the problem of somebody guessing your PIN (personal identification number) by watching your hand movements from behind.

By using a touch-sensitive screen at the ATM, they've designed a system which lets the user shuffle the regular (guessable) layout of the keypad. Even if the person watching from behind is able to guess the movement of the user's finger over the buttons, they've no way of knowing which buttons have been pressed. Simple "shuffle" and "undo" buttons toggle the interface between random and regular layouts.

Great idea.