Don Norman's chapter on “the Psychopathology of Everyday Things” illustrated examples of good and bad designs of everyday things. Norman introduced concepts and tools to critique everyday things in terms of design principle and usability. I had difficult time choosing the “thing” and I reflect on examples that Norman gave in his book. I empathize with Norman's personal experience with Slide projector and telephone. I would have been so frustrated, if I were him, so I picked something that has been frustrating lately. Berkeley/Oakland parking meter has been so frustrating to use, I picked it as a badly designed everyday thing.
Couple years ago, city of Berkeley decided that they were loosing money from parking meters, that they spent millions of dollars installing new parking meters named Reino. Berkley is notorious for lack of parking and giving out parking tickets. You can get multiply parking tickets if you don't move your car or feed the meter. They usually have one to two parking permit dispenser at each block.
Reino has a simple three step procedure visible at the dispenser. It has small monitor that says time limit on that block and information about time of the day. You walk up to this dispenser, first thing you have to decide is method of payment. You can pay in coins or credit card/ debit card. First constraint, if you only have paper currency, and no coins or credit/debit card, then you have to find some nice vendors near the meter to change your money.
Reino inconsistently accepts coins. If you put in one dollar fifty cents in coins, and if any one of those coins does not meet the Reino's standard, it will spit it all out. You have to put the coins all over again. Very time consuming. It has a poor feedback. You are not sure why it wouldn't take your coins. Reino has a small screen that can tell the user what the problem was, but it doesn't say anything.
It gets worst. You put all the change in the machine, and the machine ran out of paper, so it won't print out your receipt. You have to walk over to nearest machine usually on the next block and repeat this process. You have just paid double to park at the meter. If you are really unlucky, if can get a parking ticket, while you walk over to next block to purchse a parking permit. If there no paper in Reino, credit/debit card will have same scenario. You can get a parking ticket and contest the ticket with your credit/debit card statement. However, if Reino's computer screen can says “out of paper” or “out of order” before user put money in, problem can be resolved.
Unforeseen side effect or Reino is lack of bike parking space. There are many bicycle users and when they get rid of old parking meters, they get rid of poles that bicycle riders used to securely lock of their bikes.
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2 comments:
Hey Judi,
More than one parking meter has led me to nearly weep in frustration. Good call!
-Michelle
Judi -
I certainly understand your frustration with your meter experience, but I feel compelled to defend "Reino" since I'm the president of the company that now owns Reino. While Berkeley did buy Reino meters years ago, they replaced them with the brand about which you are complaining a year or two ago. We think our meters are pretty well-designed..check them out across the Bay in San Francisco. And since ours don't produce receipts, you don't have to worry about "out-of-paper", don't have to walk back to your vehicle to put the receipt on the dashboard, and don't have environmentally unfriendly receipts littering the streets and waterways.
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