I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t talk about Myki. So I’ll keep things broad… I have noticed of late a lack of clarity in the layout, signage and general usability of ticket machines not only in Melbourne, with a rather particular focus on parking ticket machines.
I’ve started to collate a small summary of reference images and research, looking into what currently constitutes a ‘usable design’ and am trying to unveil what might be some the driving factors behind what I believe to commonly be a convoluted spiders web of non-linear task pathways. Is it the physical tetris of the components which leads engineers to these configurations? I don’t know…
I’m mostly interested to hear anyones opinions on ticket machines they believe are nice, simple, intuitive or easy to use; outside of a single task tap-n-go myki system. Or ones you know to be difficult. Do you regularly use a ticket machine for parking at work? What do you think would be a good system? Can technology help or hinder this process? My experience has been a case of hoping there is someone in front working it out whom I can learn from, before I have to go up myself!
Some designs are establishing a coherent process and use unique identifiers, however some fall by the wayside. The design above (NYC - Select Bus Service (SBS) Ticket Machine Graphics And Interface Design. Designer: Design Team, Design Type: Graphics and Interface Design, Launch Year: 2011, Source) uses a strong delivery of colour coding and size specific typography: “The new graphics for both machines’ interfaces simplified messages, arranged information hierarchically, and used color-coding to relate instructions for each step to its corresponding action.”, however the instructions are in a jumbled reverse order to the interface with the labels on each task being different too – Take Ticket = Receipt…
I’ll be endeavouring to compile research in this post, and perhaps write a couple of posts with relevant information on this ‘study’, hopefully leading towards a short ‘design school’ style practical exercise of conceptualising a layout we could call ‘friendly’. This can not be a full design study implementing component specifications and design for manufacture, but could be a fun case study to get people involved and discuss the interaction possibilities for ticket machine interfaces.
I'm hoping to use the community to share ideas and understand what people on Behance believe is a requirement for these systems.
To give myself a starting point, I've picked a leading system and approached Concept 1 as a re-skin of the original, keeping all of the same elements and parts, but ordering them in a more lateral process.
Concept 1 below. This is a re-skin of the original product, and does nothing but re-organize the steps of the process to harmonize the experience as a step, by, step logical process. As I discuss this with others futher, we will collectively collate ideas and develop concepts which take new and radical paths to enhance the user experience.
