What’s the matter with King County Metro’s service alerts?
Simple and clear. Even though I don’t know French I know something is up. A banner might work just as well.
More below the jump…
Not so clear. This is a screenshot during yesterday’s reduced service. There is no indication that anything unusual is occurring. If a rider can’t tell service disruptions are occurring directly on the homepage, then all subsequent information is useless. However, if I did just happen to know that something was occurring, then I would direction my attention to the alert icon. Problem is that icon takes me here which still doesn’t help. The “Construction and Events” tab brings up a list of roughly 150 entries. Again, not helpful. What I should have known is that I needed to scroll down to “Eye on your Metro commute” and click on the 3rd bullet point. This links me to a blog where I then have to click on the “reduced weekday schedule” link, which then takes me to a third page with the information I want. Duh!
Another example of poor communication with the public was during Tim Brenton’s memorial procession. Sherwin put together a simple but effective list of routes and their associated re-routes. The Seattle Times linked directly to his post, not to Metro’s website. His post was simply clearer and faster to use than Metro’s website. These two examples are perfect illustrations of Metro’s chronic inability to effectively communicate with the public.
I give Metro a FAIL, not because of how hard the website makes it for riders to get information, but because of how simple it is to fix.  Simple usability improvements that riders will find helpful every day and during major events is probably the cheapest and single most effective thing Metro could do.
At the very minimum Metro should take a good look at how it can improve the usability of its website, just like Sound Transit is. Oran put together a slideshow of different transit agencies homepage. It’s worth taking a look. What you’ll notice is that the best homepages indicate if there are any service disruptions right on the homepage. If there is a service disruptions the homepage either states the problem or there is a direct link to information about that disruption.
Coming up at 3 pm. Oran gives some suggestions of how Metro can improve its homepage.
P.S. After writing this I realize that there is a link to veterans day service reductions in the “Transit News” section. This goes to shows just how little Metro’s homepage does to prioritize and quickly present the information that riders need and are looking for. As Donald Norman would say don’t blame the user for poor usability. I would also point out that there was no information about the memorial procession anywhere on Metro’s homepage last week.
Not only that, but RATP will post information in every single station and most bus stops. I was always aware of every service interruption, no matter how severe or temporary, well in advance. You can also set up sms alerts or email alerts.
Metro just launched a new service that Martin reviewed a few days ago. I’m cautiously optimistic about that. It looks well thought out. The big test will be how well Metro maintains it. On Wednesday I got my first e-mail alert for the Veterans day service reduction. It would be nice if they sent it out a few days before and then maybe the day of too.
I like the popup idea, but it would have to be customized per rider, since there is always service alerts on routes in the system.
LOL. For a second before I went “below the jump”, I thought the answer to “What’s the matter with King County Metro’s service alerts?” was “Well, it’s now in French, for starters!”
Haha. :-)
Yesterday when I was riding route 522 I heard the dispatcher come on and said that he kept getting calls asking weather they were on holiday schedule and stated that they were not. He said something else about yesterdays schedule but couldn’t understand it. If Metro can’t even get proper information out to there own drivers it is unlikely that they are going to be to successful with the general population.
I didn’t think ST was on a holiday schedule?
That is right ST was NOT on holiday. I point this out because the drivers for that route are Metro drivers.
I’m not 100% sold on ST’s forays into the web yet either or at least as it relates to ORCA. The site’s very confusing and if you try to buy product like refill a card with either e-purse or monthly pass it’s a real PITA to enter CC data. Whoever coded the page didn’t know what they were doing.
I completely agree but they are in the process of redoing both. They have asked for public input on both.
But, but, but…IT’S FRENCH!!!
And you know we Americans could never learn from them.
We’re using their trains in the NE corridor. :)
And crippled them because of FRA safety regulations.
From a user experience perspective, I would recommend against using in-page windows like the RATP one you show.
Not all visitors are interested in service alerts. And not all visitors are interested in service alerts for routes they won’t be taking. It’s less likely that this technique is accessible to all users. To remove the alert, it takes an extra click and the close button is small. It’s annoying to users when webpages change or when the experience changes.
There are better ways to display service alerts. On the King County site, where it says “Are you ready?,” a large red icon (with an exclamation point) could “hijack” that space and the user could click through to get the service alerts.
Look at Chicago Transit Authority’s website. It lets the user decide for which routes they want alerts.
http://www.transitchicago.com