A recent survey by Passenger Focus (which has been widely covered in the media) has indicated that rail passengers prefer to stand in a queue to buy their ticket from station staff, rather than buy from one of the numerous ticket machines positioned nearby. The media have blamed this primarily on the thought that the machines are too complex for passengers to use. Obviously this is a fundamental ergonomic issue; however, interestingly ergonomics has not been mentioned in either the survey or any of the media coverage associated with the story.
And maybe it’s a good thing ergonomics isn’t mentioned, because I think I can already hear the designers who worked on the ticket machines crying into their morning coffee. “It’s not our fault” they may protest, “there’s nothing wrong with the ergonomics of the machines!”
And they may be right. Ok, so they have some annoying habits like only occasionally recognising your booking from your credit card, meaning you normally have to locate and then type a 15 digit number on an unresponsive touch-screen keyboard. But in essence, they carry out the purpose for which they have been designed remarkably well – they allow the customer to select the type of ticket that they require and purchase it relatively simply.
However, in that previous sentence is a phrase highlighting the most important ergonomics factor, in this case: “the type of ticket that they require”. This implies that the passenger has some idea as to what type of ticket they require to complete their journey, and on the UK rail network, this is far from being a given.
Do they need an “advance”, a “super-advance”, an “off-peak”, an “anytime”, a “single”, a “return”, an “open return” or even multiple “singles”? In the words of the Government recycling campaign: “the possibilities are endless” – and this is exactly the problem.
Specialists in product design and human computer interaction can spend as much time and effort as they like in making the machines perform the function of selling a traveller a ticket, but the simple fact is that unless the overall ticketing structure is simplified and made easier to understand to untrained individuals, it will always require the input of station staff to decipher the jargon. It’s time to get the systems ergonomists in!
Unfortunately, while the different operating companies – sometimes justifiably – refuse to standardise prices per mile across the rail system – or even standardise what constitutes “peak” and “off-peak” periods – it seems that we’re likely to be stuck with this ticketing structure for some time to come. Maybe a short-term solution is to provide a single member of station staff to aid people on a number of ticket machines, similar to the practise in your local supermarket at the self-service checkouts, or at your bank at the paying-in machines. Clearly this is not the long-term solution we would all love to see, but it may tackle some of the issues currently suffered by rail travellers.
Anyone fancy a nationwide Oyster card system?
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