A Better BART Kiosk Interface | Hacker News Reader

A Better BART Kiosk Interface

bartkiosk.com

49 pointsbluefish33 comments

Two UC Berkeley School of Information students redesigned the BART kiosk interface using Flex 3 an Arduino and AS3Glue.

Presenting the "macros" of SFO/OAK (local airports) is a great idea. Unlike commuters, airport-goers are probably more episodic in their usage of the bart system, so they're looking to purchase a ticket of a specific value for that specific trip, instead of the "large value" ticket they will use over many days. They also may be less familiar with the route map and ticketing system, so more hand-holding is a good thing. And of course, these stops are among the most popular destinations.

Another disproportionately popular destination is whatever stop is adjacent to the current major sporting event. During a Warriors game, for example, you'll see the trains loaded with people wearing jerseys and team colors that all flood out at the Oakland Arena.

So, the addition of dynamic main-screen macros like

"Go to the Warriors Game"

.. based on some local events feed and present during the appropriate hours, would be slick...

This is an impressive design. The partitioning of decisions into paged chunks, and the associated visual representation of that space makes destination entry easy. Common choices appear early on in the system ("get me to the airport"), and decisions have appropriate defaults ("purchase multiple tickets" automatically adds another then presents options to add or remove tickets). I've always been attracted to good information design, and this is some sweet candy.

Poor design in large organizations (BART) generally comes from the top, but BART would be lucky to get off their laurels and use this design.

I've always wondered whether it was an intentional feature of the BART machines that they focus on the cash value on a card rather than the trip cost. Underpaying isn't allowed--the gates at your destination won't let you leave--and overpaying puts petty change into the BART's coffers when you forget about/lose/toss the card.

Not to mention the need to add 5c to your ticket if you want it back at the end of the journey - say for expense or tax deduction purposes if you are making occasional but expensive long-distance trips for work assignments. I've spent >$300 on BART fares for a month-long project before, and if you exit the station with the exact fare on your ticket, there goes your receipt.

Every time I've used BART, in addition to emitting a ticket, the machine emits a receipt out of the same orifice.

For plastic yes, you're right. I tend to use cash for transit fares, I don't know why. I must have some mental block about it, because I'll even leave the station to go use the ATM, then come back and make change and then put the $5 bill in and grumble about having a pocket full of quarters. Oh well, I fail.

Ah, that's a weird quirk.

One time I got stuck inside a BART station because the machines on the outside take plastic, but the ones on the inside are cash-only. I was 40¢ short and had no cash. The person at the station let me through though.

Another one of their design decisions that makes no sense :)

Underpaying isn't allowed--the gates at your destination won't let you leave

There is no fare correction machine on the way out?

As someone not familiar with the Boston area, I found I really missed having a "you are here" indicator when it came time to select my destination. I became disoriented and worried about traveling too far, even though I "knew" I was just playing with a web mockup.

I didn't know BART went all the way to Boston!

It's still only a plan. They are collecting opinions from the community right now. :)

For the record, BART = Bay Area Rapid Transit and covers San Francisco and neighboring towns. MBTA is the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority and covers Greater Boston subway and buses, as well as commuter rail throughout the state.

Oops! I told you I didn't know the area!

Little-known fact: BART has been using 8-track technology for its ticketing since the system was created in the 1970's. You can see this when the kiosks need repairs.

oh really.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/228/519444730_4eb3859a9a_o.jp...

"This machine has Windows 2000 with 256MB ram installed."

http://www.hightechdad.com/2008/04/16/bart-ticket-kiosks-run...

Like the SFO and Oak quick ticketing. However, there's an added issue with buying a ticket to Oak - you need to pay an extra $3 to get an AirBart Ticket to the actual airport. It would be nice to account for this.

Cool system. As someone else pointed out, the station select map should have some sort of "you are here" indication showing which station you're at.

I suppose one (potentially minor) ongoing expense with this setup would be that every kiosk would need to be in a its particular location's "mode"... currently every kiosk runs exactly the same way -- location agnostic.

As they are, the kiosks already know where they are. Each kiosk has the station name on-screen. Just FYI.

Despite being told it wasn't a touchscreen I tried to click on individual stations on the map multiple times. People are focused on the station they want to go to; if you show it to them, it's going to be staticky for them to figure out they have to focus on something else.

The user interaction analysis on the page points out that people in transit stations don't have the same preconception about interface. In a noisy, dirty, worn out environment, people presented with a durable looking machine with shiny labeled buttons tend to use the buttons and not the screen.

I agree, using it on the internet I kept clicking on the "screen" instead of using the buttons.

Though, I do find myself occasionally futilely poking at ATM and gas-station screens that were made years before touch-screens became common.

But why break the already-established custom of big black arrows that point at the buttons every time you need to use one? I barely even saw the letters on the map.

It sure beats stopping to find and then read the list of stations and fares printed in 8 point type on a sticker that is attached to a random spot on the front of the machine. Great work, but I'm not hopeful about it getting past the lardass bureaucrat brigade.

Assuming the cost isn't too great, I hope BART will collaborate with these two to develop and benchmark some new interfaces. This prototype is a brilliant way of presenting the information.

And even though the time savings seems small, I always think of it multiplied across the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tickets sold each year, and how much time is lost collectively. Making these mundane interactions even a little bit faster provides some huge benefits (in addition to reducing frustration).

I would kill for BART and Caltrain to adopt the same ticketing technology used in every metro that I've been to in Asia -- namely, a little RFID card that sits in your wallet, that you just hold over the sensor. Most mobile phones (in Japan, at least) incorporate the same technology, so you can just hold your phone over the sensor to handle payment.

No moving parts, and no openings, so they're very durable. And incredibly convenient.

I would kill for BART and Caltrain to adopt the same ticketing technology used in every metro that I've been to in Asia

This is what the Translink card is eventually supposed to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransLink_(San_Francisco_Bay_Ar...

I don't like not being able to specify the exact value of the ticket. I always buy tickets in multiples of the cost of a round trip commute, so that a) I'm on my home, not on my way to work, when I need to buy a new ticket, and thus not in a rush; b) my balance ends at zero, so that the exit turnstile eats the ticket, making me aware that it's out of money so that I'm not taken by surprise by an "insufficient value" message.

This design has a "make round trip" button, which would fit your needs exactly.

That only gets me one round trip, and I don't want to stop at the kiosk every day. It lets me buy multiple tickets, but not put multiple trips on one ticket.

Looks nifty, but can anyone who is color-blind comment on the "select destination" page? I feel it may be difficult to tell which stop is in which region.

I am red-green color blind. Still this works, the colors chosen are easy to differentiate. Also the large letters next to each section help. It might be possible to add a bit more contrast in the "F" section.

I wish SEPTA (Philly's transit system) had any kind of ticket kiosks. As it is we have to wait in long lines and deal with slow tellers to buy tickets.

That's not true. SEPTA has token kiosks. There are at least three of them at Frankford Station in Northeast Philly. (Though I wouldn't hesitate to agree Philly needs to upgrade to at least a magnetic card system.)

once you pick a region, there ought to be a way to go back in case you picked incorrectly

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