UX Testing for Public Infrastructure

https://setharielgreen.com/blog/ux-testing-for-public-infrastructure/

by setgree • 4 years ago

62 21 4 years ago

It's also crucial to do this kind of testing for users who are disabled, elderly, children, etc.

setgree6• 4 years ago

Absolutely; for instance one wonders if the LaGuardia team user-tested the handicapped bathroom stalls or merely designed them to code?

But in general even user testing for the median/modal person would be a big step forward...

przefur• 4 years ago

It's actually refreshing to read about airport that has been properly decorated with signs. Without proper information it can get really messy. This plus the stress that often comes with visiting airports makes it a really tough UX case. I'm glad that this terminal was tested properly, I wish some airports could do the same in following months! Also, worth nothing, “wide enough to open the door and roll in a bag without bumping into anything,” This sounds like an absolute opposite to hostile architecture trend that spawns public places nowadays.

setgree6• 4 years ago

This sounds like an absolute opposite to hostile architecture trend that spawns public places nowadays.

A lot of that user-hostile design in public space seems aimed at discouraging people from loitering/camping out, especially those who didn't pay an entry fee or buy something. But everybody at an airport bought something to get in, and everyone has a specified departure time, so I think there's less incentive to make people uncomfortable.

"How To with John Wilson" has a bit about user-hostile design in public architecture that changed how I see New York, especially if you consider that some of the city's 'users' are pigeons.

triggercut3• 4 years ago

An unfortunate reality is that wayfinding is usually a late stage item of scope. The norm is that budget attributed to those types of items has been progressively raided over the course of the project to cover for deficiencies and lack of allowances in others - certainly not good practice, but extremely common.

The flawed negotiation is that you "push it to opex", which, as we know, especially in the US, means it is unlikely to happen. So what originally might have been designed is scaled back. But yes, as with this example, there are cases where only minor tuning is needed once something is in place that is hard to simulate before hand (e.g. the audibility of PA announcements).

triggercut3• 4 years ago

What levers might we pull to get other projects to follow suit?

Show that it adds a net-benefit for the cost of investment from as early as possible. You need to embed it into the usual Business Case processes and overall investment frameworks, that are often set and used by government. Then you need to get those early expectations/requirements transferred through to each subsequent phase of the investment cycle and not left on a shelf, which is incredibly difficult given the lack of continuity between project teams. Then you need to make sure it's featured in the commercial agreements for commissioning, operations and maintenance. Oh, and have it defined in terms of benefit value (both monetary and nonmonetary) that is monitored and managed.

setgree6• 4 years ago

agree with all that! But I think there's also a cultural component, where the folks who, e.g., designed the second avenue subway come from a different background than you or I, and ux testing just isn't part of their suite of "highly mentally available tools," so to speak. So for those of us who don't actually work in civil engineering, I'm wondering what we could do to promote the user journey mindset.

triggercut3• 4 years ago

tldr: I ended up on a rant that probably doesn't answer the question, sorry

You make an interesting point, that the lifespan of public infrastructure can often outlive the culture in which it was born. Adaptive reuse is an example of how we can retrofit our current values and understandings into what already exists, but that is a complex subject.

In some way, Architects and Engineers already do and have thought this way for a long time. At least good Architects do and others try. Design Thinking began partly from studying Architecture schools but the understanding was never fed back into them. I studied at three Architecture schools, all distinctly different in their culture and approach (albeit all in the same country) but one principle was the same; an underlying philosophy of empathetic design for (users). Designs that demonstrated understanding and amenity for those who would use them were always preferred over those showing only technical or creative novelty for their own sake.

I can't say that automatically translates into the overall practice of industry, of course there are competing economic and personal demands for our time, however it's the basis in which most were taught. Architects I've spoken to (read anecdotally) about Design Thinking tend to baulk at the idea that their process can be distilled into a rigid framework of processes, methods and tools. In fact that's a common mindset for those in creative work - it's the old human vs. machine thing, reproducibility, death of the artist, reaction from the industrial age still playing out, you see this in generative design for form finding, DALL-E-2 etc.). And unfortunately in most large public infrastructure projects, the Architect is long gone, or on their last few billable hours by the time handover and commissioning come for them to verify. Even then, any changes or rectifications could be a strain on the usually already tight schedule and exhausted budget.

Technical requirements are a core part of Architectural, Civil and Urban design, and use various regimes of testing that match the historic limitations of complexity and human capacity. You test that something can perform under a small set of defined conditions, usually set by regulators as a way of mitigating health and safety risks to the public based on a combination of shared common knowledge and historic lessons learned from disasters. That's the way it's done. Do we go back and continuously test, add new tests to the suite for an already constructed bridge when knowledge changes? no. If you discovered a previously unknown fatal flaw, what is your liability ethically, and how would our economic system impact? It's best not to look if you don't want to find anything that could ruin you.

And, what I've alluded to mostly so far is that what we have is a system that will generally favor creation of economic value over anything else when push comes to shove because that is the core of capitalism. Yes, outcomes are on a spectrum of the original example, to the numerous stupid things we see in our own locales every day. Higher quality (in this case in design) usually means higher cost. Why should we pay to possibly make people happier?

Promote the value of happiness.

0xbadcafebee• 4 years ago

consumer products live or die on usability

Only consumer products in a competitive market, where the UX is everything. Your toothpaste does not live or die on usability; it's toothpaste. It could be less useable than another toothpaste and you probably would never notice. Maybe you buy it because you're brand-loyal, or it advertised a new completely made-up quality, or it's just on sale. Sometimes the UX is just a minor aspect of the whole, like car mediacenter interfaces. Stuff sold by quasi-monopolies don't compete at all; nobody cancels their Comcast Family TV Package because the TV guide's UX sucks.

setgree6• 4 years ago

I think that essentially all the toothpastes for sale at CVS have passed a two-part usability test: squeezable and pleasant-tasting.

It's true that usability might not provide the edge in a commodotized market; but passing some minimum threshold might be a necessary condition for success. Imagine trying to sell a toothpaste that was hard to get out of the tube.

A lot of the least usable things in my life -- paper straws, smart TVs -- just look like consumer products, but their actual goal is something different.

gumby• 4 years ago

Your toothpaste does not live or die on usability; it's toothpaste.

Actually it does. Is it hard to get the cap back on so it spills in the sink? Can you squeeze the tube so it doesn't just shoot out but rather can be metered out?

The old aluminium tubes were great in that you could roll them up from the end -- now I have to use a small claim because the plastic ones are too springy and won't hold a crimp, but I guess it's acceptable to most people.

6stringmerc3• 4 years ago

I'd rather buy the toothpaste that has the flip top level/flat cap even if it's upside down on the counter because it's easier to use than a twist cap. UX improvement won on that one for me. Same with flossers - I like the little plastic picks with floss a lot better than getting the reel out and twisting it around my money maker fingers.

sidvit2• 4 years ago

It's funny they the author mentions the subway as bad UX here because as someone new to NYC I find it's actually quite easy to tell which line goes to which section from a cursory look at the map. I think the line coloring goes a long way towards that

setgree6• 4 years ago

Glad to hear it and welcome! (I am the author and I have gone the wrong way on the subway many, many times, maybe I am especially a doof ;)).

I think maybe a better example would have been boarding the Red Line in DC, where both terminuses (Shady Grove and Glenmont) are in Maryland where neither is the largest town en route (Bethesda and Silver Spring, respectively). It can be tricky.

sidvit2• 4 years ago

Yeah I feel that, intimidating for sure. Without Google maps I probably would've been pretty lost as far as the subway goes when I was first learning it, and I can't say that I haven't accidentally taken the R like 3 stops too far already :)

I appreciate the piece; the topic is something I wouldn't have considered without reading it.

bern4444• 4 years ago

This article reminded me of another one I read (also from HN I think) on the design of the NYC Subway metro card machines[0].

Design is a topic I'm fascinated by as it can literally make or break a system in ways that few other aspects can (including software imo). If we put in as much effort into the design of everything as these groups did for the new terminal or the metro card machine I wonder how much nicer everything would be. Good design is invisible in that you don't even notice it was designed IMO. I hope to see more of it everywhere.

[0]https://www.curbed.com/2022/08/goodbye-metrocard-machine-fri...

6stringmerc3• 4 years ago

From a distance I can safely claim that Apple's real dominant success was in its design language and UX match of software. Not the best tech, a walled garden, but pick it up and it felt nice and worked. Hits all the right buttons as a customer!

gertrunde• 4 years ago

I had a memorable connection through Miami airport once, where a few airport staff were getting quite irate with people asking for help, responding with "Read the signs! It's clear and simple!" - while stood near a confusing sign....

setgree6• 4 years ago

It seems that "forgetting how confusing things are to newcomers" is one of the cognitive failure modes I encounter most often.

gooseyman• 4 years ago

Tweaked the volume.

Airports are some of the loudest places because of abuse of the PAs.

Gate agents extending phrases that are unneeded (the “bordering process” instead of just boarding), 27 different zones on the airplane, reminders not to leave luggage.

6stringmerc3• 4 years ago

I've noticed the trend is for higher ceilings wherever possible. I think that does a lot to dissipate congestion vibes and general noise floor.

The old tunnel style gates are of course just glorified cattle slaughterhouse designs, so yeah, they're bad from the start, can't polish those turds.

With the trend toward bigger planes anyway, design has to follow. Now there's a huge issue up in Denver about how long planes might have to taxi to a new gate and burn fuel. No doubt the passenger experience to/from will be...interesting...

UX Testing for Public Infrastructure

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