David R. - Your comic was stellar. Very nice.

Nice post! This certainly rings true from my experience. It sure would help if we more often recognized, trained, and staffed projects with this key Cross-Discipline Translation skillset…

Valerie

I don’t think social networking sites are just about maintaining loose social connections. I have found that social networking sites can help strengthen my relationships with the people that are already in my social network in the “real” world. By seeing the profiles of acquaintances in my social network I was able to find people that I had things in common with and the site fostered a deeper relationship. This is especially good when entering new social networks. It can be overwhelming to meet new people in a new place. It is hard enough trying to remember all the names of the new people let alone what activities they are interested in. By being able to connect online after meeting someone, you are able to view their interests on their profile and find the people who will make the best friends. I think this use of these sites probably comes more naturally to the younger generation.

But I do see you point about how this may hinder the natural pruning
process. While sites like this do let me connect with my old friends and see who is still in town, it also forces me into awkward situations about trying to figure out who to confirm as “my friend”.

Also, I’m sure it has caused many issues for people after breaking up. I mean if you are connected to your ex then you find out when they find someone else. That is not something you have to deal with usually.

I actually did end up leaving one site for another when I left one social group for another. I guess that is still one way of enabling social pruning.

But it should be interesting to see what happens with the generation that grew up with these sites and already have anywhere from 300 - 3000 connections. I wonder if they will end up feeling overwhelmed by all their connections when they become successful business men and women.

Shoshana

Developers and designers can’t forget that users are doing a job. Their product is a tool to do the job and not the job itself.

Cheers -Tim

Reality of the market is like a dragon blasting their hot breath at your castle. Making pass after pass scaring the people including the leaders in your castle and starting fires. You need a solution, any solution. You welcome knight that will face the dragon and withstand the hot breath of the dragon against his shield like we see in the pictures from a fairy tale. You do not care if he reframes your problem. You only want a solution. But unlike the fairy tale that same knight is a threat to the castle leaders unless he came from their ranks.

One examples is the Longitude Prize offered by the British government through an Act of Parliament in 1714 for a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude. The British navy felt the dragon’s breath of inaccurate location. John Harrison a young clock builder, a knight not from the ranks, had a solution and developed an unusual method based on an accurate clock, chronometer. In 1737 he received a payment by meeting the requirement, but the board dragged its feet so he finally received the a big chuck completing the full prize in 1765. He died three years later.

Larry, I have been reframing problems from my first three patents at Dow Chemical on Ziploc Sandwich bag extrusion process that has been used to make every bag sold. And reframed the paradigm marketing and industrial design image of the Freestyle breast pump shields that was launched in February 2008 resulting in two patents. A few dozen patents fill the time between them. Most because a dragon shadow swept over the castle. Clouds or a real dragon no one knew.

Larry I have always been the scary outsider, the knight capable of facing the dragon, to be kept in reserve in a silo to wait for the next dragon, or to be set from the castle because the next dragon will not occur on my watch.

Why oh why didn’t the designers of the system use proper user-centered design to prevent the obvious user interaction problems before going online??

I like your eye.
I miss your eye.

This is a great story that illustrates looking beyond the obvious.

Best wishes.

Brian

The new website looks great

Excellent article! I just discovered kids could ride free this week when my nephews visited — and I’ve been riding the T since college. It might be nice if they posted that info somewhere obvious, like maybe on the fare kiosks.

I remember the first time I used one of those kiosks, just after they were installed. The person in front of me only had T tokens, which of course were no longer accepted. An impatient T employee was helping him through the process and laying on the ol’ Boston charm. an excerpt:
—–
Surly T Employee: Click the ‘Cash’ button. CLICK THE ‘CASH’ BUTTON. DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?
Befuddled Passenger: But I only have tokens…
Surly T Employee: CLICK THE ‘CASH’ BUTTON!! … Now click ‘Other Amount’ … now drop your tokens in the slot.
—–

I was appalled. How the heck was someone supposed to know to press “Cash” and then drop in T tokens? They certainly aren’t cash, and the icons next to the coin slot indicate that the machine only accepts nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar coins.

And yet they rolled out this system at a time when hundreds of thousands of users had millions of T tokens in their possession. Not taking ten seconds to change the text on that button to say “Cash or T Tokens” cost tens of thousands of hours or more in lost productivity for T riders: add just 30 seconds to the time it takes one person to complete a transaction, and that one transaction has added a total of five minutes in wait time for the 10 people in line behind him.

Working with you guys in the late 90s was a defining experience for me as a programmer — whenever I wanted to cut corners, you kept me honest, and that’s something that’s stuck with me ever since. These kiosks were definitely designed by programmers who’d never worked with Dave Rondeau.

For example, the acquisition of one of the core elements of the system, the CharlieCard, is completely divorced from the kiosk itself - neither a description of what it is or where to get one is present in the kiosk UI or surrounding documentation.

Similarly, the underlying structure of the system doesn’t take user behavior into account - since you cannot buy monthly passes for a given month before the 1st of each month, the system often collapses under the weight of every commuter in the Boston area trying to obtain their passes between 8-9am.

The CharlieCard system has been in place for a year or so now, you’d think they would have addressed some of these obvious issues by now!

Great write-up! I especially like the part when you find out your son rides for free. Haha, that must have made you laugh, too. Shesh…

I wonder who was on the design team when they thought it up?

They should have prototyped and tested it. Wouldn’t have taken many people to identify those issues.

Thanks for sharing!

Jason R.