ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

So first of all, this story is told terribly, you wait till the end to explain your card is in your phone pocket, second, you need not mention your phone at all, that isn't relevant in any way to the story, it's just where you store your card.  Third of all, I have no idea what you're explaining, but here's the experience I have, as a right handed person (as most are).

Nothing changes materially if I take my card out of the pocket on my phone and hold that instead of my phone. I can still do it one-handed, contrary to your claim that this cannot be done.

I normally operate the touch screen with my right hand, it then tells me to tap my card, I pull out my card from my wallet and go to tap, oh, I get an error, because it tried to read my card as it approached the tap sensor (this is a common error that should not occur, there is no technical reason the reader cannot retry a few times, the error message is also vague and useless, fortunately for me, I happen to know that this error actually means and how to fix it--allthough I must restart the process from the beginning). Now I recall that I must hold my card pressed on the reader the whole time for the whole transaction to happen reliably, (I just know that because I've seen it elsewhere not because anything about the transaction or device interface has led me to understand this), I then hold it with my right hand, I must now operate the device with my left hand, then I must pay with my credit card, which I must retrieve from my wallet with one hand, then I try to switch hands, woops, my credit card confuses the tap terminal. On the third time, I managed to get it.

Some processes with the kiosk are difficult if you've approved without having your wallet and have to go fumbling for it. I don't know about you, but with my phone in my left hand, I can tap the buttons, pull out my fare card, tap that, replace it, pull out my credit card to pay for some stored value, then tap my fare card again, without having to redo anything. But sure, it could be redesign a bit to make it a little easier.

But not all processes are difficult.

I've seen others make different mistakes yes, just because the tap card image is the same does not mean it is intuitive...the image is small, and the rest of the device looks very different.

The image is the same as on the bus. Why does that not tell the user to do it the same way as on the bus? UI design in computers is predicated on the idea of elements looking the same being used/activated in the same manner regardless of individual context. You seem to be arguing that if you move the elements of a dialog box around that a user is going magically forget how to click a button or drag a slider.

I'm very serious here, the system is garbage, the designer is bad at what they do...objectively.  Can we stop pretending otherwise?

I started this off describing a *specific* common situation that are probably the bulk of the transactions with the kiosk by most riders - validating with your already loaded card. Yet you go haring off on some wild goose chase over something I wasn't even talking about.

So no, I'm not going to agree with you.

Last to first:

I never said you were agreeing with me, but if you're going to argue that there aren't design issues with the TVMs, well, no, we aren't ever going to agree on that.  No objective person would claim they are well designed given the user failures we've seen with them.

No, validating a ticket is not the common action at the TVM, that's the common action at the pedestal.  Most people wouldn't ever use the TVM for this except that the pedestals are frequently broken. Buying a ticket or reloading a card *IS* the common action at the TICKET VENDING machine, so I'd hardly call that going off on some wild goose chase.

The image may be the same, but it's in a different place, in a different context, on a different platform, in a different orientation, and requires a different action. Those are all part of the user experience.

Your description of tapping your fare card twice is in fact the wrong way to use the TVM according to GRT and the vendor, you are supposed to place your card against the reader and leave it there for the duration of the transaction. Your method is likely to lead to errors, and is in fact the very way I used the system which resulted in errors. Thanks for proving my point that the system is unintuitive and even experienced confident users will be making mistakes.

You're right, nothing materially changes if you take the phone out of the story, that's why I'm telling you that talking about your phone in the story is a bad way of explaining what you're trying to get across.