cre8d design

I’ve been parking in a different public carpark for work over the last two weeks to take advantage of their earlybird parking rate while town’s reasonably quiet over January. If you get in before 10am and leave before 6:30pm, you only have to pay $8/day, rather than their standard rate. You take your ticket and pay just before leaving the building. The system worked well for me as a client. I could either pay using the machine (which accepts cash and credit cards) or head along to a teller and pay there (cash, EFTPOS or credit card).

Today there was a massive hold up as cars tried to get into the carpark building. Each driver was talked to by a parking attendant and given an information sheet explaining the changes before entering. We were instructed that, in order to get the earlybird rate from today onwards, we must pre-pay for our parking on the machine before 10am.

I parked, walked to the teller/machine area (on a different level) and found a group of about 20 people – the most I’d ever seen there before was about four. I noticed some people were rather frustrated and had possibly been there for some time trying to get the machine to work. A different parking attendant came along and explained that the machine was broken and he’d have to get someone in to fix it. He assured us all that we could still get the earlybird rate, despite the notice we were given on entry.

As I left, I explained to the other parking attendant that the machine upstairs wasn’t working and everyone was rather confused at the different messages they were getting. He smiled, and carried on handing out the notices to cars that were entering and continued explaining how the new system was operating.

I’ve been thinking about that experience during the day today and here’s some reflections:

• Changing to a new system can be confusing, even for people who are experienced with lots of different systems.
• Changing to a new system slows everyone down temporarily and can make people rather frustrated.
  • It’s possible cars were turned away when they saw the large queue to get in.
• People have routines that can get mucked up using a new system which makes it a less-flexible environment for users.
  • e.g. I’d have to get cash out then walk back to the machine before 10am as there wouldn’t be EFTPOS facilities any more.
• If you’re going to change, try and iron out the major bugs as much as possible before unleashing your new system to unsuspecting users.
• Be ready to revert to the old system if the new one is broken so that new users coming along won’t experience the same confusion as those caught up any major bugs.
• Listen and respond to your user’s feedback.

Some good points though:

• People were on the scene explaining to us what was going on (even if they were giving contradictory messages) and admitting there was a problem (it wasn’t our stupidity which is always a relief).
• Clear instructions explaining the changes were given out to each person entering the building and were repeated verbally. If we’d just been handed a piece of paper, who knows how many people wouldn’t have read it.
• Shared experience – it’s nice to know it’s not just me experiencing a problem, even if the problem isn’t solved.

It’s a nice, different reminder of usability issues when making changes to websites too.