My wife, on the other hand, who is not at all technical, took it for granted that you would tap them and immediately figured it out intuitively.
The same thing with IKEA: I always rely on the manual and just blindly follow the instructions, and gets very frustrated if the instructions miss one step.
Following instructions is a good thing. Plenty of people damage stuff when putting it together since it looks obvious, but they usually miss critical details. I would imagine that the people who designed the card scanners had to put a lot of thought into their design simply because they know many people won't read instructions and would do as you suggest: figure out a way to insert [the card] somewhere.
Transit has different considerations though. It is critical that doing the right thing is obvious without reading instructions. Someone might have an important meeting to make and the time to read the instructions (or wait for the person in from of them to read the instructions) means they are late. Or (worse?!?) that time spent in line is annoying enough that someone decides to buy a car. You can somewhat get around this with more fare machines - but they are expensive and take up a lot of space. Fortunately we have human-machine interaction specialists who can tell you how to make a fare machine that is easy to use correctly without needing any instructions.
Thing I figured out assembling IKEA stuff in the past few years: if it seems like they skipped a step, look carefully at the details in pictures. Perhaps use a magnifying glass. There's going to be only one way to get from step N to step N+1, and all the information to figure it out is there. The drawings of all the pieces, from major parts to tiniest of screws, have accurate details, and there's enough of them to disambiguate the situation.
But why do people make incomplete manuals? If I have a step by step guidance and it doesn't work, because some steps were left out, than this is just a wrong manual!
(I share your frustration)
Ikea, on the other hand, prides itself on user experience. Everything is Ikea-branded, so any complaint will come back to Ikea because the buck stops there. Everything is sold internationally, and they don't want to translate it into a dozen languages, so they have to make clear assembly diagrams. Their entire brand is built around having great assembly instructions!
I mean, it's completely useless for people who has zero experience with camping -- exactly the people who need those instructions and videos and exactly the people who buy these types of tents from Costco.
Basically all other flat pack furniture I’ve ever bought has, but none of the dozen or so ikea items I’ve assembled. It’s part of why I only buy flat pack if it’s ikea, now.
One left out details in the diagrams in each step that they had deemed irrelevant to that step. This apparent attempt at simplifying the instructions stumped me for ages because I kept thinking I'd oriented pieces wrong due to the number of holes in the picture differing from the number of holes in the physical thing.
The other had switched some parts since the instructions were made, and hadn't bothered to update the instructions. This was a bit more obvious, but still kinda irritating for someone like me who is uncomfortable with uncertainty when I believe certainty should be attainable.
Whatever else can be said of IKEA, their manuals and quality control are excellent. I think of them as the McDonald's of furniture — it's never the best product, but it's damn good for the price, and you know exactly what you're going to get.
Trains in the UK still have a certain amount of "Which of these tickets/receipts go where?" while a line of irritated locals is building up behind you. Fortunately, also being the UK, someone will help you if you're struggling with something sooner rather than later.
£150 from London to Leeds?! I can fly halfway across Europe for less…
The unofficial BR Fares[1] website does a lot to untangle the complexity, although it can only do so much to mitigate the expense.
I used to work with someone who, even on an expense account, would roll their eyes if someone wanted them to do a last minute trip to London.
4-Day Interrail Global Pass, Adult passenger: €283
Eurostar seat reservation (any destination) x2: €060
= €340 (~£288)
This is Hacker News, but even still, I feel kind of icky suggesting a 500-kilometre detour to save money on a journey between two British cities no further than that distance from each other. How I wish we could just have a British version of the Austrian 'climate ticket' and leave all of our inscrutable rail fares behind us!
I guess it’s too bad I can’t save money on booking in advance, but on the other hand, I can easily jump on the train at any point of the day without sticker shock.
Some transit systems are just inherently more confusing than others. It doesn’t matter to the locals who know the quirks, but that doesn’t mean something can’t be improved. NYC has a great subway system, but I find the signage and general wayfinding quite lacking. Tokyo’s system is on a similar level of complexity but has excellent wayfinding and is generally much easier for a tourist to use.
In the end assholes designing it hid the payment terminal in such way that you can't see it from usual angle of use.. Amazingly hostile user design for those that rarely use that transport system...
The above assumes you know you will be there and so can look things up. I wasn't planning to leave the airport in one city so I didn't look up what locals do - then weather made me miss the connection and I was stuck in a city for a day.
Locals going to a new part of their own city often have the same problems trying to read the map and time tables. They are faster than tourists, but still need extra time because they don't know what is going on.
The logo you mention (four arcs actually) is owned by EMVco though, and they let people only use it for credit and debit card contactless payment cards.
There’s also an NFC logo, but as mentioned elsewhere, these cards aren’t really NFC cards, so that would also not be the right thing to use (I believe the NFC forum wants something to happen when you touch anything bearing that logo with your phone).
yup in mine plastic and metal but not paper.
Two common ways of getting around that is to either sandwich a plastic part containing the antenna to a metal one, or to punch out a circular part in the middle of the metal card and put the antenna in there (and close it all up using more plastic).
One card that doesn’t do either is the Apple Card – and as a result, you can’t tap it!
Well it's really annoying: the "metal" card (maybe as you say a mix of metal and plastic) is harder to swipe, so I got use to present it face down instead of face up, for I noticed that that way I get a better percentage of success on the first try.
I don't have the problem with my full plastic credit/debit cards.
Probably because it's around the size of a credit card and has fake smart card contacts printed on it. That being said, I would probably get confused myself too.