But "use contactless" isn't what that option does. It cancels your transaction which is why it's labelled cancel.
Suppose I'm at this screen about to get myself a paper ticket to Brixton to see my friend Jim, as this prompt appears I see Jim - oh that's right, Jim is coming here we're not meeting in Brixton. Cancel. I'm not making a journey, I don't want to "use contactless" I want to cancel this purchase, and that's exactly what this option does.
Yes most users who choose to cancel might end up using contactless, but that's not what the choice itself does, it does not, for example, check that you're carrying some form of contactless payment, nor does it charge you for a journey, it just cancels the ticket purchase.
I think in that situation most people would just walk away from the machine. Or try and press the red "start again" button.
Ok, maybe my suggestion is the wrong wording but I still think the original is confusing. If I'm going throught a process and suddenly get a confusing popup I didn't expect, my first instinct is I can press cancel and get back to what I was doing. But in this case it takes me out of the whole process.
But I'm not saying my UI choices are representative of all - really, it's about proper UI testing. The article doesn't say what user testing they did, if any.
I guess this falls into the trap a lot of tech metrics stuff falls into: ok, we can clearly show that sales of paper tickets fell. We assume there is a corresponding rise in card sales (But crucially, the article doesn't prove that). But what none of the stats can clearly show is whether people were happy with all this or not. Maybe they would have preferred the cheaper prices AND a paper ticket.
Suppose I'm at this screen about to get myself a paper ticket to Brixton to see my friend Jim, as this prompt appears I see Jim - oh that's right, Jim is coming here we're not meeting in Brixton. Cancel. I'm not making a journey, I don't want to "use contactless" I want to cancel this purchase, and that's exactly what this option does.
Yes most users who choose to cancel might end up using contactless, but that's not what the choice itself does, it does not, for example, check that you're carrying some form of contactless payment, nor does it charge you for a journey, it just cancels the ticket purchase.