Why Feeling Like a Scolded Child Led Me to Put the MBTA in Time Out

One UX Designer’s Efforts to Save Riders from Guilt-tripping Train Conductors

This is a story of advocating for change and creating empathy where gaps exists for fellow train riders (because as a UX design director within a design-thinking agile development team, I have a terrible time turning off user testing from my every day life).

My user story in this fable begins like this: “As a commuter, I need to drive myself to the train station and get on the right train at the right time.”

The first couple of weeks were a bit nerve wracking from a requirements and usability perspective.

After moving through a few days of test-driving the answers to the above questions, we land at the usability of the train, its conductors, and its app. The basic user story here is “As a commuter rail rider, I need to activate my ticket when the conductor comes around to show that I’ve paid for my ride.” As with all user stories, there’s so much more inside that single statement.

About twice a week, I will encounter one train conductor who has little patience and appears to only think of herself and the train company rather than the riders. Here’s what happens when she’s in charge of checking tickets.

Train Conductor: “Good morning. All tickets please.”

Me: Quiet scrambling from half the riders, cool, calm, and collected pull of phones and paper tickets from the other half.

TC: “If you have your ticket on your mobile device it should already be activated.”

Me: Like a jaguar she bounds faster than a photon up to my seat and stands in a huff as I clumsily open the app, click on a ticket, acti–

TC: “I’ll come back. You should have already activated your ticket.”

Me: I feel like scolded child, fumble to the screen where all I have to do is hit “activate” and with a 6:30am brand of panic I wait for her.

Me, again: I hear and see her in advance, tap the button and throw my hand with phone in the air to prove my worth to her.

TC: “Thank you.”

She dryly moves on to the next car and I’m left feeling like I still need to sit in Time Out.

At $11.00 one way, these train tickets have a risk that feels much higher than spilling a cup of coffee on the shoe of the guy in front of me. If they aren’t activated right before they’re reeeeeally need to be, won’t they just disappear? How will I know it’s safe? I don’t want to lose my $22.00 round-trip ticket investment, know what I’m sayin’? Therefore, many of us newer riders have questions and concerns. For example:

This morning, I was summoned by the Guilt-Tripping Conductor again. I visited the FAQs page in the app to see if my answers were sleeping in there, but only found the following:

Here’s the re-play of that with my thoughts displayed in real-time:

After sitting in Time Out once again, I couldn’t hold it in any longer, but I certainly wasn’t about to stand up to the Guilt-Tripping Conductor for fear of careening into a self-induced, spiraling case of the Mondays. So I wrote an email to the address listed in the app instead and served them a little bit of a UX Time Out. The letter included a summary of the above as well as this:

“…The above questions are not answered in the FAQs but my goodness would it be helpful text to see right before I tap on the Activate button!

Rather than scolding me with what I should be doing, help me understand why I should trust that the app will work even if you the conductor get to me 20 mins into my trip. Tell me that if I activate my ticket as soon as I get on the train, it won’t go away until X amount of time has passed or until I close the app. Help us help you.

Thank you,
Stacey Messier”

Three hours later I received this surprisingly helpful response:

“Good morning,

I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. Once the ticket has been activated, all tickets stay active for 90 minutes. If you close the App, the ticket will not become used or disappear. It will still show as active as long as it is in the 90-minute time frame. In addition, if your phone goes to sleep, the ticket will still be there and will still show as active. If you have any other questions, please reach back out to us. Have a nice day!”

Ninety minutes!! OH MY WORD! Wouldn’t that be incredible information to tell your panicking patrons? I wonder if they conducted usability testing post-launch… Either way, I couldn’t help but reply with the following:

“Thank you so much for this information. Please share with the development team as it would be fantastic to have the 90-minute tip in the app. Also, it would be wonderful to share this with the conductors, especially those who are particularly strict!”

Nine minutes later I receive the conclusion to our conversation:

“Hi, Thank you very much for the feedback. Our vendors are currently working on a fix to include this information within the App.”

I hope that’s true. I’ll give it some time, perhaps until October 1st and see what happens. In the mean time, kudos to the MBTA team who responded quickly with the specific information I and so many other riders need to be at ease. *high five!*

Be like your raging mother who screams, “I’M GOING TO WRITE THEM A LETTER AND GIVE THEM A PIECE OF MY MIND!”

…or…

Educate others on your perspective and maybe you can influence positive change?

Yeah, something like that. : )

* * *

If you liked this story, you might also enjoy Design Thinking: How and when should I use it? and Pre-Mortem Your Next Project & Hug the Fail Whale. You can also find more of Stacey’s posts here.

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