{"id":97,"date":"2007-08-27T12:41:27","date_gmt":"2007-08-27T18:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2010-03-06T15:56:44","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T21:56:44","slug":"metro-ticket-vending-machinewheres-the-delight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/metro-ticket-vending-machinewheres-the-delight\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro ticket vending machine\u2014where\u2019s the delight?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/welcometoalville\/1209070253\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1423\/1209070253_76650d32fd_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #ddd;\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was in Washington, D.C. for a User Experience conference, so it&#8217;s fitting that, while out with some fellow UXers there was a run-in with bad user experience. And as you might expect, we ruthlessly picked apart our victim, a Metro farecard vending machine.<\/p>\n<p>The machine that took cash was actually easy to use. The machine pictured here was for credit\/debit cards. It was a shining example of everything you would not want to experience while purchasing a farecard in a subway, particularly during rush hour or late at night, which was the case on two separate occasions.<\/p>\n<p>It was so bad, one had to wonder&#8230;did the designers intentionally create a bad user experience? It&#8217;s hard to imagine that it could be this bad UNintentionally. (Though, thinking of how bad UX happens to good designers &#8212; from personal experience, I realize I should cut them some slack).<\/p>\n<p>The problems: Not clear where the process starts or ends (in spite of the big numbers) or what to expect when it does, quirky affordances\/buttons (and of every conceivable variety &#8212; something for everyone), counterintuitive task-flow, miniscule type indicating the arcane fare structure&#8230;the list goes on (click on the photo to see a larger version&#8230;see if you can figure it out).<\/p>\n<p>My advice if you find yourself visiting D.C. and staring blankly at the farecard machine? Buy the default $20.00 ticket and you&#8217;ll probably never have to deal with the process again&#8230;you can relax and enjoy the Metro, which is quite nice once you get past this maddening gatekeeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was in Washington, D.C. for a User Experience conference, so it&#8217;s fitting that, while out with some fellow UXers there was a run-in with bad user experience. And as you might expect, we ruthlessly picked apart our victim, a Metro farecard vending machine. The machine that took cash was actually easy to use. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25,26,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-metro","tag-usability","tag-user-experience","tag-vending-machine","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.welcometoalville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}