Re-designing World !!

Am sure just a thought of going to RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) leaves a tingling sensation in everybody’s spine. I know it does to me. A trip to RMV means, clearing up your schedule for atleast 2 hours but may vary based on the purpose of your trip. More interestingly, when you take a step back and think from a more societal level, an incredible amount of man hours are wasted considering the number of people go to RMV everyday.

Based on my loosely knit estimate, I think more than 500 people visit RMV per day. Am being conservative in the number since there are times like holiday periods, snow storms that might skew some numbers. And that number is just for one RMV location. This number is so high despite the fact that rmv websites now allow you to complete many services online or over the phone.

A user experience geek that I’m, sometimes I enjoy waiting in lines, contemplating the funny fact that how easily we accept things, processes the way they are and happily live with them. Well, ‘happily’ necessarily means cursing the system and talking about it for couple of days and letting them go. Its not like I’m any different FYI.  Although I might think of switching careers from a very computer based UX job that I have right now to a job that transcends into the physical world and not just limited to computer screens, or any screen I should say. One day!

Anywho, I went to get a copy of registration for my car during lunch time on a typical Wednesday. As I made my way into the RMV, seeing the line just to get the reception desk made me wonder uh.. should I turn back or suck it up and stand in a line which had almost 20 people infront of me. And in honesty, each person was taking like 10 min at the reception desk. So things, as you can see, were not pretty.

Just to give you an idea what I’m talking about. Below is view from the top how things looked like.

Red dot is where I was.

Standing in line, my obvious first reaction was to whip out my phone and do something. Its incredible (and takes a lot courage) when we get away from the phone while waiting in line and be more social in the real world. You see things! While standing in line, I started listening to music and put my phone in pocket to resist my urge to go back to social networks and make my presence felt in the virtual society.

So how it works at the RMV :

People are supposed come to the reception

State their problem

Get the appropriate form (also sometimes checking sufficient documentation)

Fill the appropriate form

Give the form back to the receptionist

Get the waiting ticket number

Problem:

Anyways, the apparent problem lied in the above bold bullet point. Atleast that’s what I thought when I first looked at how things were working. But good thing about being a UX person is that you make sure you spend enough time identifying the problem first, before diving in completely. I think that is the key to improving any process or even leading to an innovation for that matter.

Was the fifth blue bullet the main problem? Lets see.

People usually walk in knowing the problem, but not necessarily knowing which form they actually need to resolve that problem. They wait in line, get to the receptionist, tell him/her the problem, get the form and possibly show the necessary documents. Not denying the fact that its a good way to filter out people with incomplete documents . But the whole point is, why people know about the required documents once they reach the receptionist.  Agreed that the information is all there online, but I think we should zoom out a level and consider the non-tech population who want to handle things in person rather than on a screen.

So problems in the process so far:

People do not know appropriate forms

Proper list of documents required for the service

Moving on, so when people chit chat with the receptionist and get the forms finally, they walk to the form filling area and fill out the form. Once they fill out the form, they go round the main line to receptionist (red dotted line in the figure), and again talk to the receptionist and get then get waiting list number.

So the new problem in this process is:

     3. Second line for the filled forms using the same resource (receptionist)

So, the major problem: Getting the right form and having the right documents.

Solution

An easier way to let the people know the forms they need. This could possibly be done by:

Having charts or information clearly laid out indicating certain forms for specific services

Same form is used for many different purposes So if the services are listed along with the correct form available under this info, it would make a boatload of difference.

A more expensive way could be to have kiosks for printing out the necessary forms

I was inspired to engrave my thoughts on the cloud after reading a 'decently ' written article on mashable about improvements in Google maps app for iOS as well as for android. Some of the stuff I found was a bit off so I decided to write my own version of it. (iOS)

Just because I could :)

My thoughts, suggestions or critiquing comments are my own and in no way ridiculing anybody or any company. The thoughts captured in this post will be mostly the stuff I have noticed or something I observed people struggling with.

Starting off-

I got a chance to travel 10.5 hours ahead of myself couple of weeks back, and no! it wasn't time travel. I took a 22 hr flight (16hr flight time) back to my homeland (India),Traveling isn't a pain anymore, maybe I have done too many trips back n forth from US to India.

Making these trips have helped my observational skills for sure if nothing else. Not because am a budding UX designer and have strong interests in public/environmental design, its just that solving a real world problem is nothing but awesome!

Coming back to my trip, usually I keep myself busy observing stuff around me- airports, planes, train stations etc. Although, I have travelled a lot lately and quite familiar with switching flights during transits, but every once in a while I have gotten lost and wasted lot of time figuring out terminals and gates. Maybe am too nerdy and over analyze stuff, maybe not, J'ne sais pas. But at Frankfurt's airport, my connecting flight was at B24 (Terminal B, gate 24). As I struggled my way to the main lobby, all I saw was Terminal B ->. So I made my way there, stood in the line. As soon as I got to the counter, the guys asked me you are about to enter Frankfurt. Lolz. I was like, oh no I definitely don't want to do that and turned back. 

I just wanted to make sure whether I made a mistake or is it the lack of information that was causing problems. I retraced my way back and started from almost the place I got off from my first flight (I had 3 hr layover). And going by the information that was on the walls and boards, again I ended up taking the exact turn to the same line. So something was definitely wrong. Finally I had to talk to a personnel and ask him the way. The connecting flights was somewhere around the building with absolutely no signage.

India:

Travelling in India is always fun. You would know if you are from there or have been there. I got a chance to travel in the famous Delhi Metro (it wasn't the first time) and was amazed by the amount of information about connecting trains and streets that was provided. The most fun part was this:

The concept of directional footsteps just blew my mind. It was just so cool to see something that simple could make such a big difference. Considering literacy rate in India, I am sure there will be substantial amount of cases when people cannot read Hindi or English. So labels would obviously will not be the most efficient way to show navigation. But color coded directional signs is something I have not seen ever. The picture shown above has purple and yellow, I didn't get a chance to see if they used purple with blue since it might cause problems for color blind people.

Thailand:

If you see free Wifi on any airport, your first instinct is to whip out your phone and go about your business. At Bangkok airport, I saw this board and immediately started connecting to the wifi n/w.

 After looking at this what do you think will your first move?

Honestly, I just typed password as : Here

But what it actually meant was that you have to collect wifi password from this information desk. And it wasn't just me, there were bunch of people who did the same thing and then went to the desk to finally figure out that you have to get a password from this desk. I know the text looks visually minimalistic and stuff, but designers have to be really careful when it comes to playing with colors and font sizes on information boards. Pretty is not everything!

My 0.02

Playing dumb and trying to solve real world problems made me realize that our work as designers should be more focused towards stepping into the user's shoes and understanding real world problems rather than have them walk you through it. (Ofcourse not applied to every field)

                                    Although now companies have started spending significant amount of money on user research and user experience, but still often times you come across things that are just not well thought off.

As hinted from the first image, I'm going pick up the case of headsets that are usually used in office settings (those long WebEx sessions) or maybe for communicating with your comrades (Battlefield 3/COD).  

Coming to business, I borrowed one these at my work place and plugged it in right away. While fiddling with cables, I saw this small control to increase volume and a control to mute your mic. And before I dig deeper, I want to think contextually as to what would be your normal user flow (if you may call it) of using a headset.

Mine was:

1. Untangle the wires

2. Plug the USB into the slot (probably analyze the USB icon)

3.  Put the headset on 

4. Check out the controls on the panel to understand how to operate this

And now stop !

Answer this:

How would you naturally hold the cable?

(the cable going down is to headset, cable going up in the screen goes to the USB port)

And that's how I held the cable to set the volume and figure out whether its muted or not. When I picked up the cable, I saw '-' on top and mute icon inverted. So I naturally turned it to see it upside down.

       So now I saw the '+' on top and '-' at the bottom with mute icon in correct orientation. But then I couldn't figure out whether the mute button's orientation is in respect to how I picked up the control naturally or the way I'm holding it now (inverted). 

Disclaimer: The following opinions are totally personal and in no way I want to condescend anybody/any company involved with this website.

Not that I travel by bus a lot but I do use lot of travel websites, usually once a month. I happen to travel to New York this weekend to expand by social life. While booking tickets, I bumped into Megabus's website, which is fairly user-friendly but could use some gins here and there.

While choosing a 'From' and 'To' fields, the form seemed fairly similar to what I have seen. Or wait, was it?

When booking tickets, the main aim is to get to the dollar amount quickly, without too many interfering/confusing fields. Here are some of the things that would make the process on Megabus.com much more quicker.

'Leaving from' and 'Traveling to' are too wordy. A simple 'From' and 'To' works like a charm (Bing Travel).

Having an auto complete field for the place without drop downs. I mean seriously, Drop Downs are so 90's. Typing and autocomplete is much quicker as compared to the scrolling and finding Pittsburgh from the list.  

Avoid people scrolling or selecting the return trip.

Suggestion: Have it as a Step wise process within page

The address should be displayed differently, probably bold or with different color.

CRITICAL - The itinerary page should not have the Search & Buy panel on the left. It will just throw people off and people might actually think there was an error and they have to start over. People look from left to right and if they see again a selection panel the very first thing, they might start filling in the details again.

Avoid too much scrolling  

My Mockup:

How often we walk into our workplace all caffeine-ed up in the morning and scan our id/RFID cards to unlock doors? From Monday to Friday!                                             

In most companies, the RFID tags come with those cool looking retractable clips that you can hook it on your belt. There is nothing wrong with those if you may ask! The problem lies in the second part of the process, which is, hovering over the scanner to get access into the building.

After using some different card readers, there are some clear design problems in some of them.

There are some readers that are used for car parking (Eez pass) that works from long distance (ubiquitous)

Some that are used in buildings and are mounted on the walls. 

And finally some that are used on subways and T-stations where the rfid readers are comfortably placed around the waist height of a decently sized person.

My concern is the using the 2nd (wall mount) design in an office building where most employees prefer to have the tags on their belts or pockets. Having used and observed the wall mounted RFID readers, its cumbersome to get your card stretched out with the possibility of people lifting themselves up. And if you like a string to hang it around your neck, slight possibility is that you are might be leaning if you are not averagely sized. I have been to Fidelity's office entrance and they use the subway style entry system where people dont have to stretch their cards out and scan their cards without any effort. And it works likes a charm! 

Some used cases like when your hands are occupied, (maybe you carrying pizza boxes for your boss) or what if the string is a bit short, you might end up keeping the card in your pocket instead of hooking it on the belt, which inturn takes more time, specially in winters when you have security check yourself to find things.

              The most important takeaway from design psychology is to make experiences natural and easy to navigate through.I went to Loon mountains for the last snowboarding trip of the season. After a long tiresome day, I was going back to my room in the elevator where I saw this interface. I would agree that I was totally exhausted and was not using my brains much, but the moment I saw the layout of the buttons, my natural inclination was to press the white button between the bell and the DOOR CLOSE icon to close the elevator doors. 

There have been lot of debates about whether the buttons should have descriptions on them or on the sides.The image above is a classic example of an interfaces that is somewhat confusing. My initial thought process was that the bell icon was a button, as the STOP RUN button has an interaction tool within itself, and considering the natural left-to-right scan of an human eye, the bell button made perfect sense.

Not satisfied with my self-critique, I decided to bring people into the elevator and did a quick usability testing study in the hotel. I had four of my friends use it and surprisingly, everybody took couple of seconds to figure out the actual buttons and differentiate the true function of the white buttons.