Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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??

Sunday, June 5, 2011

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 :)

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

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…