[Sigia-l] NYC-CHI ...NYC Subway Vending Machines

[Whitney Quesenbery]

At 10:37 PM 1/7/2003 -0500, Listera wrote:
>It often costs as much money to run operations with bad user experience as
>those with good user experience. It's a matter of expectation.

If I may introduce a slight tangent in this discussion:

I would agree that "merely functional" is not an end-goal to aim at...that 
if we do not advocate for good user experience, no one will.

But

All too often, these threads start out with an aggressively critical 
diatribe on someone's pet peeve. Then, someone else feels compelled to say 
that "really, it isn't all THAT bad". Then, someone defends good UX...and 
so on.

So, in a mildly pollyanna-ish way, it makes me wonder if it wouldn't be 
more effective to be less abrasive and judgmental in the presentation and 
discussion of a case study. There are few designs that are 100% bad or 100% 
good (though some may have been 99% so).

For those who are able to go, it will be interesting to hear what 
challenges Antenna faced - and be able to ask them questions about where 
they think they succeeded, where they failed. I look forward to hearing 
reports from the meeting.



On the subject of the NYC subway vending machines: One of the things I find 
frightening about the design of most of the ticket vending machines I've 
tried around the world is not whether they are good or bad, but that 
because they are large pieces of industrial hardware, they are likely to 
persist for a long time.

Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467

Using Personas in the Development Process
January 15, STC Tele-seminar  http://www.stc.org/seminars.asp

UPA 2003 Ubiquitous Usability - June 23-27, Scottdale, AZ
http://www.upassoc.org/conf2003/

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