…which I found in the blog of a german journalist living in London, writing about what happens if you have a great zest for life and are disabled at the same time.
I don’t want to describe it there. Just watch it (it’s a short movie), it’s really worth it. And think about that next time you are designing a web site.
Lunchtime! Vegetables au gratin, not bad after all. In our factory canteen you can only pay cash. We’re nearly the last one. I know of a couple of lunchrooms who do accept only chip cards which you can charge on an automat. This may have some advancements (you don’t have to mess with loose change), but after all, it’s just one step more between me and my food, isn’t it?
Spending the afternoon might become a challenge. My boss cares for the first hour with an unexpected meeting. Meeting is just another word for the collective comparison of PDAs and laptops among my troglodyte colleagues (Me have bigger club. Me leader!). I earn some disbelieving looks and return them with a Yes-I-am-using-paper-and-a-pencil-because-I-have-everything-under-control-anyway expression. — Surprisingly, this works. Even that good that my boss assigns a task to me which was scheduled to someone else in the beginning. I would never have believed that one day ragged paper and an IKEA pencil could become insignia of superiority. Question is: What do they think I want to show that way? That I care for the really important things? That I have everything in mind?
I spend the rest of the day setting up an experiment which is mainly manual work and taking notes. My colleagues are wondering why I’m always coming around instead of using the telephone. This makes me wonder which one is more disturbing: The phone ringing or someone knocking on the door? As for me, the phone causes more stress because it gives you the impression of total urgency: If you don’t pick up the receiver immediately, it will stop ringing and you will miss something important. But once you have picked up, you must start the conversation. If someone comes around, I can tell him to wait for some thirty seconds without him running away again. What do you think?
Since it is Lent now, our roman-catholic friends are doing without meat for 40 days. I am protestant and vegetarian anyway, so this does not really mean much to me. Anyway, some of them asked me if I would also forswear something for that time. I usually answered that I’m trying to pass the days without golfing. This is not a great relinquishment since I’m not golfing anyway, but it usually leaves them sufficiently impressed.
But all that made me think of one thing: Would it be possible to spend at least one day without computers, integrated circuits, digital devices and all that? Let’s think it through. I use the following rule: I may not use any semiconductor-operated device at all. Other electric devices will do ok, although I will try to avoid them. Also I will let others use digital devices for me. You may call that cheating, but I can only control myself, not others as well, and I cannot entirely shut down public life.
First, I would have to replace my radio controlled alarm clock by some good old mechanical device. And there’s the first drawback: I can impossibly sleep with a ticking clock around. Of course, I might wrap it in lots of fabric, but then its ringing will also be muffled. Not good. Also I would have to rewind it from time to time, but that’s a minor problem - at least if it doesn’t stop in the middle of the night, which according to Murphy’s Law it will do the nights before important meetings and stuff. But my digital clock once let me down also, because I failed to program not only the time but also the weekday. (Let’s call that a draw.)
Luckily my bathroom works on a somewhat hydraulic base, I even switched back to shaving foam some years ago since the electric razor broke and left me half-bearded one morning. But on the breakfast table I am unsure again about whether toasters and coffee machines are usually IC-controlled or not. On closer examination, the toaster has a simple bi-metal control, so I can use it safely. About the coffee machine, I still don’t know, so I decide to postpone the coffee to when I am at work. (The machine there is certainly not under digital control, and even if it would be: it’s usually my roommate who’s handling it because in earlier times I never got the amount of coffee powder right. But that’s another story.) Looking around in the kitchen, I notice that nearly all devices have at least an LCD display which means there are semiconductors at work. Well, except for the fridge which is that old it’s even strange it works on electricity and not on steam power. By its energy consumption and noise radiation, it wasn’t invented long after that. Usually this annoys me but this morning I even feel something like gratitude. Good old fridge.
Note to self: Replace it.
A while ago I wrote some posts about the user interfaces of ticket machines in Germany (article 1, article 2). Meanwhile I am told that they have been improved considerably: the ‘Fast purchase’ route is now considerably faster, requiring a minimum of only 4 or 5 clicks to buy a standard ticket (compare that to 16 clicks previously!). The way they have done that is to skip the whole timetable thing; instead you only select whether or not you want to take the fast trains (which has an effect on the price). That’s a very good start, since it optimises the common case: people who routinely buy the same ticket and know exactly what they need. And for those with unusual requirements, there’s still the long route with its multitude of different options to choose from.
Despite these changes, plenty of usability challenges remain. For example, my friend told me that he didn’t realise when using the machine when he had reached the payment screen: he could have just inserted his card, but instead found himself looking around for the “next” button to press. There was just some small and non-obvious bit of text on screen explaining that you were now ready to pay.
In fact the usability problems of German train ticket machines are still so pronounced that the national rail company (DB) is now offering courses to teach people how to use them. (See the scanned newspaper article, taken from Aalener Nachrichten/Schwäbische Zeitung, Tuesday 18th December 2007. Sorry that it’s more than a month old, I’ve not had much time to blog recently.)
This article is somehow slightly scary and hilarious at the same time, in the way how the train staff systematically blame the users for their inability to use the system, rather than seeking the blame with the system itself. Hilarious because it’s so stereotypical, and scary because such a big organisation can get away with it without people putting up a fuss and explaining that this is just not acceptable.
Some highlights from the article:
Moschner [the course instructor] says that the new ticket machines have a more visible display and also accept cash besides credit and debit cards. “Are they just as cumbersome as the old ones?” an over-70-year-old lady enquires. The course instructor remains calm: “They are not cumbersome.”
Hmm. Complete denial of the existence of problems. Two more quotes indicate that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of user behaviour going on:
“Read what it says there. It is important.”
“The ticket machine really does tell you what it wants, you just have to look.”
Why should I be trying to find out what the ticket machine wants? It should be trying to find out what I want! Also, I shouldn’t have to read every word on the screen. That’s simply not what people do. People don’t even read whether doors are labelled ‘PUSH’ or ‘PULL’ before trying one or the other. People just press random buttons in the hope of getting somewhere quickly, and the system should be designed to cope with this sort of behaviour. Anything else is just unrealistic and designed for robots rather than humans.
Fortunately this course is a positive initiative, probably with a thought along the lines of “well, if we can’t get the design right, at least we can teach people how to use the broken design”. I guess that’s a valid approach to the problem. And hey, 8 people turned up to that course, maybe that’s 8 fewer people who get frustrated with the machines. Sounds a bit like a drop in an ocean to me though.
Here it is — my photo series documenting the menu madness of German ticket machines. See part 1 of the story for an introduction. This post contains a lot of graphics, so I’ve split it out into a separate page. Please click the title or the following link to read it.
I reveal a shocking comparison between ticket machines in British and German railway stations. The average traveller in Germany needs to press 4.5 times as many buttons as the British traveller to purchase a simple return ticket! Part 1 of my series on ticket machines.
One of the things which unite the British and the Germans: both love to complain about their respective trains and rail networks. In both countries, very few people have a positive opinion about trains, stations and everything that belongs to them. I think that some of these complaints are unjustified, and I do not want to support a general condemnation of what is basically a pretty good service.
Still, there are many differences between the British and the German rail systems. In Britain, there is a whole host of different companies involved, while in Germany rail transport is dominated by a single company, Deutsche Bahn AG. The fare structures in both countries are completely different; for example, in the UK, cheaper advance fares are only available on single journeys, while in Germany advance fares exist only for return journeys.
One aspect which I want to examine today is one particular way how customers get in contact with rail operators: through ticket machines. Ticket machines are getting more widespread in both countries, and in Germany you even have to pay a surcharge if you don’t want to use a ticket machine and would like to speak to a human being instead. At many small stations you don’t have any choice but to use a ticket machine. It is therefore crucial that ticket machines are accessible and usable by absolutely anybody: regular commuters and occasional travellers, children and senior citizens, locals and foreigners, geeks and technophobes. Quite a challenge!
Last weekend I was in Germany, which gave me an opportunity to compare the ticket machines there to the British ones. I took photographs of the screens, which I will present in detail in two separate articles. Today I will compare just summary views of the two contrasting system.
Some of the points to consider: How long does it take an average user to buy a ticket? Can the machine quickly serve common requests, as well as cater for occasional unusual requests? How usable are the machines for visitors, who are not familiar with the fare structure and other national particularities?
In terms of speed and ease of use, the German machines performed shockingly badly compared to the British ones. On a British ticket machine, you need to press four buttons (four clicks) to buy a return ticket to a common destination. On a German ticket machine, buying a return ticket requires a minimum of sixteen clicks — four times as many — and that’s if you know the machines well and and find the “fast track” screen!
If you have a railcard in the UK, you need two additional clicks to tell the machine about it, increasing the process to six clicks. Not so with the German machines. There, an average BahnCard owner will make a whopping twenty-seven clicks or more to buy a return ticket. 350% more than the British equivalent!
Even the most seasoned and quick-fingered rail traveller will need at least a minute to buy such a ticket in Germany. And if you are not familiar with the system, it is not at all surprising if you get lost in the depths of the menus and need 10 minutes or more. In fact, while I was photographing the screens of a German ticket machine, I was approached by a group of Bulgarians who couldn’t work out how to buy a ticket from Stuttgart to Ulm, a very common route. And I had complete understanding for their difficulties!
The biggest difference between the two systems is that German ticket machines have an integrated timetable service, while British machines simply sell you a ticket to a destination, and leave you to your own devices to find out which train to board and where to change. I prefer the British solution, because the majority of people know their route well and don’t need to click their way through lots of timetable information. However, the German machines can be extremely useful if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and want to find the best route back to civilisation — they even tell you where to change and which platform to go to at each station. The British machines lack timetable information even if you specifically want it.
Two other problems with British machines are that you cannot use them in any language other than English, and that they assume you know about different types of fare. If somebody comes from abroad with only rudimentary English, they will have difficulties telling the difference between a Cheap Day Return, Saver Return, Open Return and First Open Return, let alone a whole zoo of different advance and operator-specific fares. It will not be easy for them to work out that some fares are only valid at certain times of day, or carry other restrictions. This could be made a lot clearer at the expense of a small number of additional clicks (while still staying far short of the German navigational nightmare).
In summary, I think that British ticket machines win this comparison by a wide margin. However, there are also a few aspects which they could learn from German machines.
A few additions: what about people with impaired vision? Can they get the option of having the ticket machine read out loud to them, and controlling it via a tactile keyboard?What about people who are too short to be able to see the screen? What about people with motor problems, who have difficulties hitting the right buttons? These questions are not straightforward to answer, but I hope that they have at least been given some consideration when designing ticket machines.