MOVED!

I've moved this blog to www.matth-ijs.nl

It's also consolidated with my other blogs

Silly bike parking things

In the Netherlands, nearly everybody rides a bike (on average we have more than 1 bike per person!). No wonder that you can find bike parking spots everywhere, like the ones in the photo up here. Actually, this photo shows two different types of bike parking systems.

This is one I found at the trainstation in Eindhoven. In the top photo you see the regular parking spot, in the bottom photo the "new and improved" ones. The old parking method can house nearly twice as many bikes per meter as the new parking method. Seeing as that there are not enough spots anyway, I think this is a pretty lousy "improvement".

On top of that, the new method also relies on technology that can (and does) fail, can only be used for a short duration (after that your bike is no longer locked!) and is only available for people with a citizens-card. You get that card for free when you register for living in the city, but who wants to keep another card in their wallet just to park their bike?

Solution

Remove the "improved" method… Why do we keep putting expensive new designs in places were they are not necessary??

Coffee Machine at TUE

After the ticket-machine at the zoo and the locked-in 24h machine, I now have a new addition for the unusable machines collection :) This time it's a vending-machine for something very essential: coffee!

Aside from the number-based interface (which will maybe come another time), there is something else very wrong with the design: where do you put your money?

You've got 10 seconds to think about this…

…

No, you're wrong: it's not the grey thing that looks like the money-slot! :D You actually put your money in the small, nearly-invisible black slit on the right of the number-pad.

The grey-hole is for the "TU/e Coffee Card". I don't know anybody who has this card, or anybody who knows somebody who has this card. Anyways even if you had one, you can't use it since the grey slots are usually filled with coins :)

On other, similar, machines they've added some stickers. But of course nobody reads the stickers, and so people keep losing their money by throwing it in the wrong slot.

Solution

A simple user test would have shown that this design is misleading. But in general, it would be wise to always keep affordance in mind: if a user can put money in a card slot, he will. Not because he's stupid or malicious, but because putting money in a machine is not the most important thing in his life at that moment.

So we should change the "mouth" of the card-slot so that it doesn't afford to put money in anymore. And besides that the money-slot should be moved to a more convenient location and should be made much more visible. And then of course, we test it again :)

Confusing streetnames

We're looking at a crossing today, in Scheemda. We're driving on the main road and to the left and to the right of is a street, each with a different name. Streetsigns are blue in the Netherlands and usually located on a streetlamp, I hope you can spot them on this small image. Otherwise, enlarge the image by clicking on it!

Now imagine you're looking for a street called "Kwekerslaan", which you know from your map is on your right. It would be logical to look at the streetsign on the right, right? :)

The municipality of Scheemda disagrees!

The streetname for the right street is on the streetlamp on the left street… I've included a close-up to make this clear. Notice the tiny, tiny arrow in the sign?

Solution

Especially for road signs, creative solutions are not a good idea. Drivers have a complicated task to do anyway and every second they have to spent on finding and understanding a roadsign is a second not looking at other, more important things. With 30 km/h, this means a car has travelled 8 meters with the driver not spending his cognitive attention on the road.

The convention is to put streetnames on a streetlamp close to the street to which they belong, and this is yet another case where we shouldn't have deviated from conventions…

Slideshare.net and Squirrel

Hi all, it's time to start blogging again ;)

Today we have two confusing interfaces. These are the financing application for OSX called "Squirrel" (http://www.squirrelapp.com/) and a website for sharing slides (www.slideshare.net). Both are nice applications! But I've been confused by their use of very simple symbols.

Maybe you won't be confused, but remember that you're in the mind-set of things being different than they seem ;)

First, slideshare:

Which button is for zooming in? :) I've blocked the text, so think first about it before seeing if you guessed correctly.

I got confused multiple times. Especially if you don't think about wanting to search through slides. All the items on this page are related to the current slide, not for searching a specific text... (Update: they've changed it now, and ditched both zooming and searching)

Next, Squirrel:

Squirrel is a nice application with which you can manage your financials. It can import from your bank, but sometimes you have to add a transaction by hand. In the image below, I wanted to schedule a monthly transaction. But money can go both ways of course: it's either added to my account, or subtracted. So which button do I check if the money comes to me?? Did I check the right button, or did I check the outgoing-money button?

Again, I was really confused! I actually made a mistake with this that took me over an hour to figure out! :D

Actually, the rest of the program is using color coding to avoid such mistakes. You'll find the solution to the earlier question by looking at a different part of the interface.

Solutions

Symbols are always difficult. Include a text-label always, or use conventions. Even that doesn't guarantee usability: slideshare was doing both! In that case, I would suggest removing the search-button and adding a search-field (similar to how the top-right of your browser looks, most likely).

In the case of Squirrel there definitely is color coding needed! But even better would be to just use the "+" or "-" symbol. This is just confusing :)

Ps: Mac-users, I can really recommend Skitch to you! It's great for making screenshots!

Opening windows (again!)

Seems like mistakes are often found in the same places, this time we go back to an item also discussed in my very first blog-post: university windows! :)

For some reason, there's something weird with the windows in my current office at the Technical University Eindhoven as well. They can only be opened with a special crank (which can be seen in the image above).

Now we are a lucky office: we have a crank in our room! However, some offices are not so lucky, and people in those offices need to go to the "servicedesk" which can be multiple floors away from you depending on where you are!

The cranks have to be brought back as soon as possible, because there is only a limited amount of them and they are slowly disappearing (guess why…).

The only reason I can come up with why this was implemented this way was to have a better control over the heating of the building (which is also terrible). If this was the purpose, then it failed, as people can get the cranks without having to justify where and why they are opening a window. As it is now, the very simple problem of opening windows got a needlessly complicated solution.

On top of this, the mechanism is difficult to operate, which means you need a strong arm. Also, the mapping is very strange: the top window opens by rotating a handle all the way down at knees-height in the window frame. You can see this in the below image, with the beautifully sunny weather we had. Newcomers wouldn't have a clue how to open our windows :)

Solution

I'm starting to wonder if I should skip the solution section, as again the answer is: keep to the standards! There are dozens of designs for opening windows that do work, why reinvent the wheel?

Another trainstation oddity

After the 'smoking pole', I've found another weirdness at a train station, this time at Eindhoven Central Station. What we see here is part of the roof of the bus station and part of the train station. The weird thing that these aren't connected.

When it's raining, it pours in between these two roofs making a big mess of the station. Even after the rain, it keeps dripping for at least half an hour. This leads to a weird distribution of people who are waiting for the bus, as they logically leave the rain-trench free. Which in turn is very inconvenient if you quickly need to go through this crowd to catch the train, you'll keep crossing the rain!

A 'solution' provided by the station for the mess the rain makes can be seen in this image, the water is caught in a drainage system… But that's after making a mess of the people that were standing there! :)

Also, can you spot the person who's using the smoking pole wrong in the image below? (taken in front of the entrance)

Solution

Either roof could have been made 50 cm. longer and there would have been no problem. As it is now, it'll probably require a lot more work and money to remodel one of the roofs.