Re: Airport shuttle

[Chuck <writer -at- BEST -dot- COM>]

This is an excellent example of how communications and usability are
involved in day-to-day life everywhere, as shown clearly in Donald
Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things."

One of my favorite examples is in San Francisco, at the Hyatt at the end
of Market St. Along one sidewalk is a glass wall with a couple of doors
in the middle. The doors are apparenly not to be used for entering the
hotel; they have the words "Exit Only" printed on the glass--but facing
inward! (The people who would need to know this are the people outside,
who see those words backward.)

Ben Kovitz wrote:
>
> Yesterday on the shuttle from the rental-car drop-off to the
> airport terminal, I came across an unusual technical-communication
> glitch.  Nearing the terminal, the bus driver hit a button to
> play a recording telling what the next stop is.  That was nice--
> the recording is in clearly spoken English, something that many
> of the bus drivers don't speak.  But the recording said to refer
> to "the list above" to see which airlines were at the East
> terminal.  Um, "above" what?
>
> Predictably, lots of passengers started scrambling around to see
> what the recording was talking about.  I thought maybe there was
> a sign up high outside, so I looked out the window.  The speaker
> was in front, so some people looked above the speaker.  It turned
> out that the list of airlines was on a placard up above the
> windows on the inside of the bus, where advertisements usually are.
>
> This confusion probably happens on every single trip.
>

--
"[Programmers] cannot successfully be asked to design for users
because...inevitably, they will make judgments based on the
difficult of coding and not on the user's real needs."
        - Alan Cooper
        "About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design"

Chuck Martin
writer"at"best.com    www.writeforyou.com


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