Speaking of usability, which I wasn't, but anyway ... yesterday I was coming back through Schipol Airport where they're running a "self-service passport control" trial. Uh-oh. Sounds like a recipe for global terrorist attacks, or something.
So anyway. They have this huge green machine that's shaped sort-of like a standalone ATM, except not quite, as it's taller and thinner and exudes less "it'll cost you just to look at me" malevolence. And alongside it is a display with an exciting Powerpoint-style presentation that would give Tufte a shock. The display breathlessly informs us that we are invited to participate in a self-service passport trial, and it tells us this in big blocks of text in English or Dutch. These big blocks of text flash on and off the screen just slightly too quickly to read or interpret. Oh, and did I mention that this display "inviting" you to the trial is after you've already queued for 5 minutes, so it's not so much "invite" as "demand"?
And this huge green machine. I think it was designed by a confused five year-old who really wanted to draw space ships or Robby the Robot but was told "no, you have to draw a machine to scan ID for people that are in a hurry and already quite stressed out". And of course the kid, not understanding "scan ID" or "stressed out" and quite fazed by the whole concept of border control in general, but still understanding primary colours and big whooshy swoopy lines, came up with this really exciting machine design that might just read ID but would really be much better strapped on top of an Ariane 5.
At the top of the big green rocket-powered scanning machine is a touch-screen, except crucially with no indication of it being a touch-screen at all. It displays the message "choose your identification method", with a big glossy picture of an ID card and a passport, and tiny little green arrows beneath them that it turns out you're supposed to touch. You find this out by being told it by the supervisor who is stood proudly next to the machine. Maybe the supervisor's kid was the designer.
So you select your identification method and are then advised to place it face-down for scanning. There's no visual clue of where you're supposed to place it, and underneath the screen is what looks like a coin return slot, a horizontal glass square hiding a supermarket barcode reader, and a couple of centimeters above it a weird horizontal sheet of plastic with white lines across it. It seems like the obvious choice is to slap the ID onto the supermarket bar code reader, so that's what I did, all the time hoping I wasn't triggering the ignition sequence. After a few seconds of thought, the machine flashed up a new display: "proceed to passport control", and so I sighed with relief and headed over to a bored-looking border control guard who verified my passport the old-fashioned way (by laughing at my passport photo).
So there we have it - the computerised border control trial, demonstrating just how well the computerised check-in machines work by comparison. I suspect the results from this trial will be rather inconclusive to say the least. On the one hand I'm relieved that this user interface nightmare will never see a wider deployment. But on the other hand, I'm somewhat dismayed that airports won't be brightened up by bright green rocket-shaped ID scanners any time soon.
Technorati Tags: amsterdam, critique, europe, transport, travel
Posted by savs at August 10, 2007 12:10 AM