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Comment by nikatwork | Hacker News Reader

These buttons are horrible from a UX perspective. The old design had a light that would activate after you pressed to acknowledge your request. Many of these new ones don't, so pedestrians will stand there mashing over and over as there's no feedback.

Not to mention the smaller metal lozenge at the top which looks like a button but does nothing, so people press both surfaces in confusion.

Oh and people are so Pavlovian trained to start walking at the "cross" sound that when you have these buttons side by side at an intersection people will literally start walking into traffic when the adjacent button triggers.

The design is pants on head idiotic.

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>Not to mention the smaller metal lozenge at the top which looks like a button but does nothing, so people press both surfaces in confusion.

If you'd ever touched one of these (or read the article properly), you'd know it provides a tactile mirror to the sound the button is playing, telling deaf people when to cross.

If I'm listening to music I often stick my thumb over it even though I'm not deaf, so I don't have to keep looking at the light to see when I can cross. The top of the button case is just the right size to rest your palm on it and allow your thumb to drop down and rest on the popper plate.

> telling deaf people when to cross.

Not blind people? In the UK the boxes have a spinner underneath. (So please never stick your gum under the box) and the spinner is for blind people who can't see the lights. Not all lights have sounders on.

Blind people can hear the sound it makes.

They don't all (in the UK) make a sound. In particular, crossings where there are multiple light controlled traffic streams near to each other will have no audible signal to prevent the problem - mentioned up thread - of zombie pedestrians (like me) walking into moving traffic at the prompting of an adjacent crossing signal. Crossings in residential areas will either not have an audible signal or will have an audible signal only between certain hours. The one outside my flat for example stops bleeping at 8PM and doesn't resume until 6AM.

Source : when you are initially registered blind in the UK a rehab officer comes round and explains all the workings, including the largely unknown spinner on the underside of the switch box. And yes, please don't stick gum there.

>They don't all (in the UK) make a sound.

But this is about the design of an Australian button, and the Australian button we are talking about always makes sound.

The GP to which you are replying is about UK specific signalling.

Can you not read?

I said the lozenge was to assist deaf people. DanBC asked for a clarification that I meant deaf people rather than not blind people, and cross-compared to a UK pedestrian button. I clarified that blind people can hear the sound that Australian buttons make.

You missed the point entirely, downvoted my post and started talking about how not all UK buttons make sound.

That's nice, but not what everyone else was talking about. (twit)

> Can you not read?

Actually I find it profoundly challenging but usually rewarding enough to justify the effort. Usually.

One day I shall write a short guide titled 'Rhetorical Questions : how might we answer them?'. 'Can you [not] X' will be chapter 2. Prize of one splendid upvote for anyone who can guess the title of chapter 1.

"Chapter 1: What is a rhetorical question?"?

All crossings have lights.

Not all crossings have sounders.

Deaf people can always see the lights. Blind people can't always hear the sounders.

"Interestingly, the cones still aren't built into the boxes and have to be retro-fitted."

Retrofitted at the expense of the taxpayer, because Radix won't/can't license the technology to the manufacturers of the box itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-22706881

If you need to rest your hand on it or read an article, to understand how it works, that's a major fail in the design.

If it's designed for blind people, I don't think visually signaling its function is necessarily a great option (though to be fair, it would at least allow sighted people to point out the device to their blind friends).

Over 90% of people are not blind. Why deprive them of extra information they are able to use? And even if we wanted, reducing everyone to blind person's abilities won't work: If there are 5 people waiting for the same traffic light they can't all hold their finger on the button at the same time.

Sighted people can see the (much more convenient) lighted sign that says "cross/don't cross". A tactile device is unnecessary for those people, and it doesn't really matter if they know that it exists or what it is for. As such, I would say the biggest design priority with respect to the sighted majority would be to make sure it's not actively confusing (i.e. it won't be mistaken for the cross button), and visual cues as to its purpose would be above and beyond.

I know I'm only one (Australian) person, but I've known this for as long as I can remember and have interacted with them. I've never noticed people pressing it in confusion, but I do the same thing where I touch it if I've got headphones in so I know when it turns green.

>If you need to rest your hand on it ... to understand how it works, that's a major fail in the design.

It's literally a tactile indicator. Very intuitive by feel(which is its purpose).

>The old design had a light

in vic many have a red light to appease feeble primate minds.

> so pedestrians will stand there mashing over

that's because the faster you pad mash it the quicker the lights change :D

> the smaller metal lozenge at the top

if you push and hold it really hard you can cause the start of the crossing sound be a loud squelch

The metal lozenge does multiple things. It gives you a tactile sense of when its safe to cross. More importantly -- it gives a direction to a blind person. The sound can tell you it's safe to cross - but not which way. That license is aligned with the direction to walk

Why not use a recessed surface to cleanly distinguish it from a button?

It's hard to take your criticisms seriously when you are clueless as to what the 'metal lozenge' is for. Have you never even been so curious as to touch it?

Far from 'pants on head idiotic', rather it's 'decent design that could be a bit better'.

> Have you never even been so curious as to touch it?

The correct design is to create it such that it serves the unsighted without enticing the sighted to mistake it for a button and touch it for a function it does not perform.

I touched it and discovered that it gives tactile feedback for the deaf. Seems like the correct design to me.

As another commenter pointed out they could have made that surface not look like a button, then you would not have to discover that UX function, which is superior design. Good design is intuitive.

> The old design had a light that would activate after you pressed to acknowledge your request.

In Victoria the buttons have a light. They also have proximity activation (wave your hand in front of the light) and make a loud noise when you activate it.

> Not to mention the smaller metal lozenge at the top which looks like a button but does nothing, so people press both surfaces in confusion.

It's for people who have issues being able to see the far side of the road (to see if the light is on). They can put their finger on the lozenge to tell if it's safe to cross. It's the same idea as European crossing buttons. IMO the German crossing buttons make the least sense to me -- they have something that looks like a switch but actually just vibrates (for the same reason as the Australian ones vibrate).

Wait, proximity activation? I've lived here my whole life and never known this. Going to have to try it out tomorrow.

I visited Melbourne a few months ago, and there were quite a few of these near the CBD (though not all of them, which might explain why you haven't seen them). They look like a regular crossing button, but the button part is painted black and has a red V made from LEDs (IIRC).

I've actually never seen any of the complaints you talk about.

I've never seen the buttons with a light in it - maybe NSW just never used them?

The "smaller metal lozenge" vibrates for the blind (and headphone wearing), plus provides direction. I've never seen people use it in confusion.

> Not to mention the smaller metal lozenge at the top which looks like a button but does nothing.

I vaguely remember reading/hearing somewhere that it's a disability aid - I believe it vibrates or something similar when the walk signal is lit.

Until you try all the rest.

I have tried traffic buttons in many different countries (there's a sentence I never thought I'd type) and none have made me as egregiously furious as the Australian ones.

They're an abomination on the level of CSS and the iTunes interface.

Furious at traffic light buttons? Why?

I've not tried all of them, but I don't think the UK ones are too bad, and they seem pretty basic to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light#British_standard

In addition to the lights mentioned in the Wikipedia article above, there is often a sound played when it's safe to cross, and there's a device at the bottom of the traffic light controls that allows you to feel when it's safe to cross.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-22706881

Are the systems from other countries much different (better or worse)?

The British (actually England, Wales and Northern Island) have the design covered by law (TSRGD 2016). Scotland have minor change in the regulations.

The sounder (aka bleeper) and device (aka tactile) are for visually impaired pedestrians. In Scotland, you can also have a voice telling you the vehicles has a red (e.g. Vehicles heading North on Main Street have been given a red signal).

Systems in other counties have advantages and disadvantages (IMHO), lack of a clear standard compared to background noise. Too complex, so problems in maintenance. However some difference in sounds give a better indication to pedestrians on the start/middle/end of crossing time.

There is also Countdown - http://content.tfl.gov.uk/PCaTS-Note-2-Overview-Presentation...

I dislike the ones that are used in at least LA. The buttons don't have much haptic feedback to them, plus they shout "WAIT!" at you if you press it.

The current trend in the UK is towards removing the green/red signal from the opposite pole and sticking them on the switch box. This is supposed to help people like me who have a severe visual impairment. Unfortunately, whoever came up with this idea allowed their good intentions to override a bunch of other design problems, viz:

1) They used a light with basically the same brightness as they were using for the poles on the opposite side of the road and stuck it at head height. Thanks, now that's all I can see at night. Many people with a VI suffer some form of photophobia, so this is not helpful.

2) It completely disregards decades of unconscious habit/muscle memory formation. We are trained pretty much from birth to look across the road for a visual signal while waiting to cross and it's not there anymore because the new signalling method was used as a substitute instead of a complement.

3) The ergonomics of standing looking sideways at a box which blocks your view of the traffic vs standing facing the road being able to scan traffic in both directions and the signal.

4) Since there are no signals on the opposite pole and most complex crossings have no audible signal, there is no longer any way for pedestrians to know that the state of the system has changed or is about to change once they have stepped into the road.

5) With RE to point 3, it is universal that the new boxes are mounted at 90 degrees to the kerb. This means they are facing oncoming traffic (albeit usually on the opposite side of the road). This means they are in driver's eyeline. What happens when a zombie driver sees a light in their eyeline change from red to green? Three times in the last year I have nearly been run down outside my flat due to this particularly stupid human factors error.

6) For extra stupid, newer installs come with a pedestrian detecting PIR sensor mounted on the top of the pole. Not - as one might imagine - to detect a pedestrian and automatically trigger a request but to detect if a pedestrian has pushed the button and then walked away. These are universally either so badly installed or so poorly designed in the first place that the false positive rate is insane. There is no audible or tactile indication that the system has cancelled your request because you're not standing in the particular 30 cm spot its PIR can see.

So the UK gets A for effort but F for implementation.

Edit : rogue punctuation.

I see. Thanks for your advice. Are there any groups working on behalf of the visually impaired to improve the designs of these systems?

Not that I'm aware of. RNIB groups have been known to campaign for the addition of pedestrian controlled crossings in specific locations or regions, but part of that is banging on the DfT regs which actually stipulate this design.

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