I recently returned from a holiday to Japan and New York.
Obviously getting away from your desk is a great way to rethink how you do things, but for me it reminded me of the importance of rethinking everything.
As soon as I arrived in Japan, I noticed the smallest thing that really spun my head around; pedestrian crossings there don’t have buttons.
For many people that might not mean much, but for somebody who has grown up in Australia, you become used to having to press a button at all crossings or else the walk signal will never light up. What really shocked me was not that there was no button in Japan, but that I had never questioned this in Australia. Not once in 28 years had it crossed my mind that this was an unnecessary action, as the cars have to stop anyway.
The effect this had on me was unsettling. I’m supposed to question things; it’s my job. Yet I here was a design crying out for a redevelopment to address its inefficiency and I had overlooked it. For years. This led me to wonder what else I had been simply accepting at face value. Usability is meant to be the practice of testing, reviewing, questioning and refining systems and processes, yet so many conventions are accepted as “good usability” without being questioned and proven.
Look at the project you are working on now. What aspects of it have you questioned? What alternatives did you try? Have you put down the different elements of you work and looked at the whole project?
Obviously to be efficient we have to make assumptions and adhere to conventions. However, we can never forget the importance of stepping away from everything and asking “why?”
Hey Owen,
your observation is interesting in re to the buttons. I had the opposite experience when I came to Australia. Where I come from (Germany) only those traffic lights with the sole purpose of allowing pedestrians to cross the street (i.e. not the standard lights you find at an intersection) have buttons. It’s true that the later don’t require buttons as the cars will have to stop anyway to give way to the traffic coming from crossing streets. However, when you expect to not have to press a button to cross the street (Europe) you easily oversee that action is required when you do and you find yourself standing there waiting like an idiot for the traffic to stop.
In that sense, the buttons in Australia are - even sometimes unnecessary - designed for consistency as they make people familiar with the fact that they always have to press a button to cross the street. Apart from that, most of them do have an effect on how lights change - especially at night when they run on a different frequency.
So from a usability point of view there are definitely pros and cons.
@Kai,
Yes, I had thought the same thing when trying to come up with a better solution, and agree that consistency is definately better rather than having Australians waiting forever at some intersections and wandering into traffic at others.
As an aside; some crossings in Japan do have buttons, but I couldn’t’ work out what for. Thankfully my my girlfriend (who had been there before) pointed out that they are for elderly pedestrians, and will make the walk signal remain on for longer. So cool.
Another interesting design feature of the Japanese crossings - and this is probably the result of being buttonless - is a counter showing just how long you have to wait until it turns green next. It’s only present in Tokyo really, and even then on the bigger intersections, but it’s an interesting and very logical feedback system.
The Australian equivalent of it? Pressing the button 15 times, thinking we’re telling it to “hurry up”. No button + no time indicator could possibly lead to a confused and seemingly powerless pedestrian… at least we get the satisfaction of button mashing here
@Chris
Saw those whilst there, think they are awesome. I know a few people have suggested those for traffic as well, but all I can think is that drivers would always be jumping forward before it actually turned green (especially in Melbourne, where orange seem to mean “speed up”)
What is funny about the button mashing here is the lack of feedback we get. No light, no sound, and the button doesn’t even seem to have any resistance. At least the old ones had a light on them