No subject

- There was no interface option to "reload" a Metrocard with added value,
which is presumably one of the primary benefits of a durable, stored-value
system. 

- An option that *is* offered is the paperstock "one-time use" Metrocard, a
mayfly object which has all the melancholy of a Basho haiku: you buy it, use
it to pass through a gate five feet away, and immediately deposit it in a
trashcan. I fail to see how this is preferable to a token, which is at least
recoverable and reusable.

- After the $1.50 one-time use card, the machine only permits the purchase
of Metrocards in $10.00 increments of value. Since I've often found it
convenient, for whatever reason, to purchase cards in $3.00, $4.50 and $6.00
increments, I found this onerous.

- As a matter of physical interface design, both the height and placement of
the cash slot were problematicly nonobvious.

- Finally, although I suppose this is a matter of personal preference, the
machines are simply ugly. While the Dieter Rams-ian sheen of BART's machines
lacks a certain humanity, and the desire for a minimal interface coupled to
1970's display technology forces some poor usability decisions, I can't help
but regard those as aesthetically far better resolved that these oddball
yellow-green-black-and-blue boxes.

In their defense, they did offer quite a nice multiplicity of language
options; my girlfriend Nurri was surprised and pleased to be able to buy
cards in her native Korean.

And in all fairness, as the above survey of cities suggests, nobody has
gotten this quite right. Some places and systems are better than others
(Hong Kong's Octopus stands out in memory as particularly doable), but there
are lines of fumbling customers at all of 'em, ever nervous that a bobbled
transaction will mean a missed train.

Someone hire me to do a transit vending-machine interface! ; . )

Cheers,
A.
Tokyo