Just like the sun will rise in the morning (not that we'll necessarily see it!) some things are highly predictable...
Yes, this one really is as predictable as the sun rising ! This is getting repetitive, but the obligatory picture is below. Note the variation this time on the theme- no longer a rough paper note typed by someone who doesn't know how to format correctly in MS Word, but instead a message conveyed by the machine:
Note to any tourists: yes the UK really doesn't do ticket machines well and we know it. We haven't quite understood yet that the purpose of a machine isn't to take up valuable space and waste electricity. We love queuing and also paying people to hang around checking tickets.Trains will be disrupted due to strike action
I love that fact that we jest about having an integrated transport system in the UK. To be honest, the only integrated aspect I have ever seen is the ability for union officials to bring the entire transport system to it's knees. Perhaps that's the solution- just have the unions run the transport system ? Oh, hang on, isn't there a book by George Orwell about that ? Of course I'm joking, there is absolutely no way the country can go back to the 70's/80's joke that was British Rail crippled by strikes and bad service, stale cups of tea and 3 day old egg/cress sandwiches !
Self Service Machines will have poor User Interfaces
I've blogged about this before, but why do self service machines (designed for efficiency) have such poor user interfaces ? I reckon no studies at all are undertaken to figure out the user interface model that works. Instead some 23 year old from a red-brick University gets a job coding (likely in some 1980's programming language) the user interface and just drags random boxes into a design screen (a bit like a children's toy game).
0 comments