State of the art analysis of SL:s website
I've made an observation of SL:s website as my state of the art analysis. SL:s current website have two relevant tabs for tourists. The first one is called “Start” and there you enter the station from where you want to departure and the station where you want to get off. It looks like this after you have pressed search: 
As you can see information about departure time, arrival time and total travel time is shown. There is also information about the subway train. All of this information is good but if you look at the next information you can get from the picture you see that traffic alerts is shown in swedish. This is not good at all, specially since this is SL:s english website and this information can sometimes be critical! Further down it is shown which zones you travel through and how many tickets are necessary. Under that the price is shown for three different purchase possibilities. This is really great but a problem arising here once again is that part of the information is in swedish which seems to be a recurring pattern.
I think that the overall design here is good, you get the most information you need and the output is simple. For our product, the reconstruction of SL:s ticket-machines where you as a tourist should be able to purchase a ticket in the most simple and efficient way possible, we can use parts of this design.I like the idea of first entering the two stations where you are going to travel between and then getting the purchase information. I don’t think that the timestamps should be listed as they are listed at the moment since our machine app and then context of use is focusing in buying tickets and not so much in travel information. Also the time stamps as they are now can make for misunderstanding for the tourists due to the fact that they might think that the ticket is only for that particular train at that particular time. What I think is possible to do instead is to list when the next three train leaves and the average journey time between the two stations. The information about the train number should be to the right of the time of each departure and the whole text should be shown as in the picture “Metro green line 17 towards Skarpnäck”. In this way the amount of place the information takes is scaled down and the risk of misunderstanding is decreased. Further down our machine app we should have purchase opportunities. This part differs significantly from their website since you will not be able to use the choice “I spärr” since that requires other human beings to operate and also due to other purchase possibilities that should be available. It’s also possible that the other purchase possibilities make it better to have two simple options in the very beginning when you first enter the machine like “Single ticket” and “Period tickets” and if you press single ticket you get to the similar picture process I have described above.
On SL:s website under the tab “Fares & tickets” there is information about different purchase opportunities and their prices. The first one is a travelcard which makes its possible for you to travel as much as you want for either 24 hours, 72 hours or 7 days. Here there are two different pricing categories: full price and reduced price. They are not explained which is bad. It is also stated that you need a SL-card for this which costs 20kr but can be reused the next time you visit Stockholm.
The second purchase possibility is “zone tickets”, which also appears in the picture above. You pay for the amount of zones you travel through. They are purchasable through the existing automats, SMS and the current SL-app “SL-biljetter”. The thing about zone tickets is that they are at the moment just a more expensive version of the next possibility: SL Access credit. Zone tickets have also got the different purchase categories full price and reduced price which is not explained here either.
SL Access credit is just as zone tickets but you pay with a SL Access card instead. You have to buy the card for 20kr and load it with money but after that you get better prices. As the two alternatives above here is also full price and reduced price without explanation.
Almost at the bottom of the page reduced price is explained. It is for children between the ages of 6 and 19 and persons above 75. There is also another category which have not been even mentioned before: children below 7, they travel for free with company of an adult! Here I think the website can be much more clear earlier to avoid misinterpretations. Also there is an unnecessary overlap here where the age of 6 is in both categories. Why not just say reduced price is 7-19 and 65 or children below 6 travel for free with company of an adult?
There is also a different option for students. They can buy a Student Travelcard for either 30 or 90 days. The price is not listed on their website, which sucks but it’s a nice possibility for foreign students.
Well I have now listed the current purchase possibilities and prizes and can conclude that SL:s categorization of data is really bad at the moment. The question to answer now is which of these should be available on our machine app. The best option would be if you could get a new SL-card through the app. If that’s the case we could skip the option of zone tickets. You can then get fewer options like SL Access credit, travelcard and student. As I earlier mentioned there could first be two options “Single ticket” and “Period tickets”. Under “Single ticket” the option SL Access credit is available and maybe we applicate a similar look to the picture which is described earlier. Under “Period tickets” travelcard and student could be the options. We must also make it very clear about the different prizes for the different ages, misunderstanding is not okay! This is just my first design impressions but the design of this is something we will have a closer look at soon. Over and out! Viktor Bram
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar