If it was right next to him, it might be faster but they might have found that it was likely to cause people to merge steps, and that lead to an overall lesser quality and accuracy in a system where those are at a premium. It's possible that what looks like an inefficiency was a purposeful bit of process engineering to hack human nature for a better overall end result. With step level verification through photographs, it's possible they might get similar results with this system but without the forced inefficiency.