ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

This is the point though, we already have similar interfaces, if someone uses one wrong, and another one right, there is a difference in design between those two systems which is causing users to make a mistake on one.

The place to tap the card on the kiosk is right be side the screen and highly visible. It has the *exact* same image on it as where you put the card on the farebox in the busses to tap. The three people I helped that day clearly understood what to tap on the touchscreen and that it was telling them to present their card, and the same goes for most of the people I have watched over the past 2 months. They also understood where they needed to present the card as they were not trying to tap elsewhere other than the sensor. The part of the process that is failing is only the part of holding the card to the sensor for the "tap" action. So which design element, pray tell, is making these users not lay their fare card right on that spot the same way for kiosks as they are able to do for the fareboxes?

I actually didn't see any mistakes on buses, and people already have been using tap cards on payment terminals.

Then you were not watching. Every other person at the start, it seemed, had to be told to lay the card flat for the tap.

Honestly, I've been using the system for a while, and I find it physically awkward to use right, it's so poorly designed, it cannot be used with one hand (before the card holder) and the onscreen instructions actually lead to improper use, and worse, the error message that comes from improper use does not in any way help the user solve the problem.

I can use it easily with one hand to pay for a trip. I hold my phone in my right hand, extend my forefinger, tap the two buttons necessary to validate my monthly pass, and then plunk my phone down on the sensor with the pocket holding my card face down. "Beep!" I'm done.

On the bus, I was watching, what were they doing, every person I saw tapped their card on the bus in the same way that they would in a grocery store.

So first of all, this story is told terribly, you wait till the end to explain your card is in your phone pocket, second, you need not mention your phone at all, that isn't relevant in any way to the story, it's just where you store your card.  Third of all, I have no idea what you're explaining, but here's the experience I have, as a right handed person (as most are).

I normally operate the touch screen with my right hand, it then tells me to tap my card, I pull out my card from my wallet and go to tap, oh, I get an error, because it tried to read my card as it approached the tap sensor (this is a common error that should not occur, there is no technical reason the reader cannot retry a few times, the error message is also vague and useless, fortunately for me, I happen to know that this error actually means and how to fix it--allthough I must restart the process from the beginning). Now I recall that I must hold my card pressed on the reader the whole time for the whole transaction to happen reliably, (I just know that because I've seen it elsewhere not because anything about the transaction or device interface has led me to understand this), I then hold it with my right hand, I must now operate the device with my left hand, then I must pay with my credit card, which I must retrieve from my wallet with one hand, then I try to switch hands, woops, my credit card confuses the tap terminal. On the third time, I managed to get it.

I've seen others make different mistakes yes, just because the tap card image is the same does not mean it is intuitive...the image is small, and the rest of the device looks very different.

I'm very serious here, the system is garbage, the designer is bad at what they do...objectively.  Can we stop pretending otherwise?