Sacrificial RabbitCode. Art. Perversion. Madness.

Monday, June 12. 2006

Calgary Transit and Interface Design

I recently got a shock the other day. Calgary Transit has decided to update their website, and giv eit something of a face lift. Specifically, the "Schedules" section is being completely changed.

This. Sucks.

Old Interface - even this small you can see what is happening. (click to enlarge)

Currently, if you want to find out when your next bus comes, you enter in your stop number, route number, and click submit, and you're taken to a page with a list of the next 5 stop times. The stop times are easy to read, and the font size is just the perfect size. It also displays an arrow with how long before the next bus comes. Furthermore, if your next bus comes within 20 minutes there is an icon of a guy walking to the bus. If it comes in 10 minutes, then the iconthere is a running guy. With one quick glance, you can see when your next bus comes. The interface is easy to see, easy to use and easy to consume—especially if you are in a hurry.

New interface - badness, (click to enlarge)

Come July 3rd, this will be replaced with an "improved" interface. This interface is so bad that I will be finding out my next bus via telephone from that point forward. What makes it so bad? First of all, the typeface is too hard to read. The type-size is too small, and the color is a tad obnoxious. Second of all, there is no friendly icons to show you, at a glance, where you are in time, in relation to missing your bus. And the final thing, and quite possibly the worst, it tells you what time the bus comes, but according to who? The bus comes at 8:35AM. Is that 8:35 on the CT server? The time set on CT's CEO's watch? An atomic clock? My computers time? Very annoying.

This is a good example of what to do, and what not to do. Sadly, it seems CT is moving backwards.

Update: I could hardly trash-talk the CT website and not actually send them an email stating how I felt (Thanks to my baby who also made a suggestion). If I want the new CT website to be usable, I needed to take responsibility for it, so I did in fact send them an email right after posting this entry. They sent back an email saying that they forwarded my email to the supervisor. With any luck, this story will have a happy ending—I'll keep ya posted.
Posted by jonnay in Art at 11:41 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)
Defined tags for this entry: , ,

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

the new phone system isn't that much better either.....
#1 evil c on 2006-06-12 20:02 (Reply)
CT uses the same time as the atomic clock, channel 19 (weather channel) and cell phone towers. Take your pick as to which one you want to set your watch to.

BTW - I know for a fact that channel 4 time is not the same as CT time.
#1.1 brian on 2007-01-15 11:27 (Reply)
Agreed. It's a lesser of the two evils situation I guess.
#2 Jonnay on 2006-06-12 20:32 (Reply)
You should consider writing them an email, perhaps these are things the designer has not thought of. They are great points. They still have time to ponder and change.
#3 Shell on 2006-06-13 10:54 (Reply)
It amazes me how a city with so much surplus/money can have such an underfunded and mishappen public transportation system. Many other cities with much less dough per cap. have far better systems... for example, in montreal and vancouver, the busses come on time. amazing isn't it?

I know that the new bus times via telephone suck also, but they seem to be more accurate than they used to be. for a number of years, the teleride system was actually run by a different company than Cal Transit and as a result, changed bus times NEVER got updated. resulting in stupid little things like the 2 bus being continuously 4 minutes early. That's just not right.

Good luck with your email, I hope somehow you succeed because the internet bus-time checking was the only thing I liked about Cal Transit. I totally agree that the new one sucks. You said it, I don't know what time they're on. I need it to say how many minutes left there is...
#4 Raven (Link) on 2006-06-28 14:03 (Reply)
Everything you said is absolutely right. You ennumerated exactly how I felt about each of the good points of the original design versus all the bad things about the new design.

Sadly, I believe the Java clock they use is based on my computer's time--which is sadly off. I'd check that, but I'm at work and my poor Mac G3 takes a year and a day to load a Java applet.

I sent CT an e-mail when they changed the site, but they didn't respond and they certainly didn't make any improvements.
#5 Kirstin on 2007-05-01 10:55 (Reply)

Add Comment

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA