Rage against the machine

Recognise this thing?

I certainly do – in fact I seem to spend half my life looking at it, jabbing it with my fingers, or swearing at it.

Yes, it’s a ticket machine. But not just any ticket machine. If we’re being anal (and we’re all friends here, so why not?) it’s a Scheidt & Bachmann Ticket XPress.

There are apparently over 700 of these things around the UK rail network. At least seven train operators have deployed them. (If you really want to, you can spent €4,600 doing a four-day course in Germany on how to nurture, cherish and repair them. You get a certificate and everything.)

But you know what? I’d like to propose an urgent maintenance programme for these machines, involving the business end of a large axe.

The Ticket Xpress, you see, does my head in every time I use it to collect tickets I’ve ordered online. Read on and I’ll explain why.

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Screen 1

So here’s how the ticket collection process starts.

I’m guessing this welcome screen is the only part of the machine’s look and feel which East Midlands Trains can control. It’s quirky and fun.

It’s also consistent with the company’s stylish use of three stock graphic elements: a palette of light blue, dark blue and light grey; tightly-tracked white Futura type; and a red dot. *

Looks like collecting our tickets could be a friendly, visually-appealing experience, right?

Screen 2

Uh-oh.

I count 114 words on this screen. This begins to make me very annoyed.

For one thing, I don’t need to see about 110 of them. If I’d been given the simple options Buy tickets or Collect tickets to begin with, the machine would’ve realised I didn’t need to see any of the fare options at all.

(One of the most popular alternative machines, the Shere FastTicket, has exactly this binary choice on its opening screen. It’s way simpler to use.)

For another thing, why split out each of the six listed destinations into two separate buttons? The different ticket types aren’t explained, and the prices displayed are wrong for anyone except adults paying full fare – hence the sexy caveat Railcard and child discounts can be applied later in the ticket selection process.

Why not just let users drill down to the correct ticket type – then see the fare?

Also, why have one button which says More Popular Destinations… and another which says Any Destination? Are we supposed to be able to guess if our destination’s popular?

As if that wasn’t enough, those randomly-sized buttons look like I designed them on Paint. Not a good look.

But let’s push on through, and tap the Collect Pre-Paid Tickets button.

Screen 3

OK. At least the word-count has dropped significantly now. We insert our card into the slot and await further instructions.

The next thing that happens is the LCD panel above the card reader displays the message Card authorisation declined.

Uh? What was it trying to authorise? I thought the card was just for identification purposes? And yes, that is indeed the case – the machine just displays that message by default, every single time it goes through this process.

Why? Who knows?

Screen 4

Now, I know the QWERTY keyboard isn’t the be-all and end-all. And some would argue a typewriter-style layout on a public kiosk is potentially unfriendly for less tech-literate folks.

But really. On balance, is there any defence for an alphabetical display like this? Especially when the Z is left stranded to the side of the, um, otherwise really-well-thought-out 5×5 matrix of letters?

And the first usability checklist for kiosks I found online ranks “Keyboard has QWERTY layout” as number 1 in its list of vital attributes for input devices. Too right.

Screen 5

This is where I really start to get irritated.

These are the tickets I’ve ordered – so now I’m given the option to Print All Journeys. As opposed to what? Print some of them? There’s no other button!

And how about that matrix next to my tickets, kindly outlining their details? Adult(s) and Child(ren) – OK, understood those.

But AAA.(s) and Supl.(s)? What the hell are you talking about? What are they, and why are you showing me them on this screen?

Screen 6

Finally we get to the printing stage. We know this because there’s a little picture of an inkjet printer under the sexy legend Print State. Get on with it!

Screen 7

Oh look. The first thing on this list is a Type SGL. The second is Type SPL. Glad we cleared that up.

Screen 8

Tum tee tum… The fact that my seat reservation is COMPLIMENTARY is very useful information at this point – to differentiate it, presumably, from those paid seat reservations we all make these days. Were the designers of this interface paid by the word?

Screen 9

Finally the usability steeplechase has been completed, and we conclude with perhaps my favourite screen of all. In a metaphysical sense, aren’t we all at some point taking our receipt, yet waiting for it simultaneously? I know I am.

So there you have it. Ever used a worse public computer interface than this one? I’d love to hear from you – if only so I can avoid unfortunate displays of rage by steering well clear of it.

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* In ads elsewhere this red dot has been everything from a car headlight, to an olive, to the middle of a  - presumably very rare – joint of beef. This time around it’s some Space Invader-type dude’s head. Peculiar, but each to their own.