If you have children, you have been to zoos and theme parks (of course, children are not a mandatory requirement to visit a zoo, but they help). If you have, especially when you are abroad, the Internet is your friend: getting an eagle-view of what's on store on location, knowing about bars, restaurants, picnic areas, and toilets in advance is invaluable. Not to mention the evenings of fun and anticipation that printing out a map where x marks the spot can offer, thanks to the magic of PDFs.
It is somewhat disappointing then that so many online presences are lacking, uninspiring and provide little information. That is, except for our good friends at the
København Zoo. Examples are in the numbers, as they either don't tell you about special deals or they forget to point out where the facilities are, so useful approaches stand out. One of them is the way Gröna Lund, the tivoli park in Djurgården, Stockholm, offers a quick and extremely clear view of what's available for your children if you visit. If you click the 'Attraktioner' link on the main navigation bar, you land in a page which offers this:
As you can see, it's a list of all the main attractions. Just above the list you can see radio boxes, and an invitation to
Välj längd, to choose an height. Click on the
Under 120cm radiobox and you get this:
which is the complete list of attractions available to children (and hence families) under one meter twenty centimeters tall. This is simple and straightforward, as most of good design is, but invaluable.
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Way-finding is one of my pets. Actually, way-finding and the concepts of space and place in information space are, but that sounds a bit pompous, so let's stick to way-finding.
Now, way-finding tries to understand how we are able to walk around and make sense of the surrounding environment, remember paths, places, and generally know where we can fetch that tasty sandwich or how to avoid a gangsta neighborhood. It has its roots in urban studies, cognitive psychology, the environmental sciences, and psychology: first applied by Kevin Lynch in the Sixties to understand the way we experience urban landscapes, way-finding is an important piece of the theories which try to unravel the complex relationship we entertain with digital interfaces, navigation in virtual environments, and the Web.
I had a chance to do some research-related traveling during the Summer, and I happened to be in Cambridge, UK, for a whole week-end, so I played tourist big time. I took a lot of pictures, visited all the right places (and if you are there with kids, do not miss the Sedgwick Museum), ate in a half a dozen bad restaurants. The city is beautiful, albeit so stuffed up with Italians that at times it looks and sounds like the Riviera.
Anyway, I walked a lot. Being always the resourceful kind of guy, I had a foldable paper map with me all of the time: Cambridge is a medieval city, has plenty of monumental buildings at its center, and although the river Cam makes it even more interesting with bridges and all it did not help the laying down of a regular grid: Cambridge is your classic web of turning, winding streets. While cruising St. John's Street I walked into this map:
Map of Cambridge, details
I looked at it, and ladies and gentlemen I got completely lost. I didn't recognize the city it depicted. I knew it had to be Cambridge (of course it had to, who would place a map of Exeter there. That is, except me and Søren, possibly), but couldn't make any sense of it. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't low on sugars, and I'm pretty good at maps: I just couldn't read it. I was puzzled for the good part of five minutes, then I got it.
Now, before we solve the mystery for you as well, a description and a few pedantic notes are necessary. Indulge me. The map per se is your pretty normal, standard street map. It's in a visible, accessible place, and large enough to be readable even from a few steps away. Typefaces, colors, wording, icons, everything is neither particularly visionary nor plain wrong. It lists major monumental buildings and places, facilities, parkings, and throws in a few directional arrows for top-of-the-list locations from there (top of the picture).
And that's interesting, since this is actually the kind of 'You are here' map everyone loves, but it adds a little signage. For the technically inclined among you, this is a so-called YAH map, category 4, tools which demonstrate the surrounding environment, with some category 5 addition thrown in.
Let's see. For the not-yet-bored-to-death, the full list of way-finding tools goes like this: 1. tools that display the user's current position, say LORAN, a radio-navigation system; 2. tools that display the user's orientation, such as compasses; 3. tools that log the user's movement, for example the traditional captain's log aboard a ship; 4. tools which show the user's surrounding environment, like maps; 5. guided navigation systems, like GPS and signage.
Now, one of the principles good YAH maps rely on is called structure matching. It can be defined as the need to pair known points in the environment with those on the map, and it can be even more easily described as what you do when you turn around your map to align it with what you currently see from your point of view. Unfortunately, this really works when you either have a kind of false perspective map, like an isometric projection, or when you align the map to some emergent visible feature, easily recognizable on the spot. That makes sense, as I love my maps close to important landmarks, and I love to be able to look at the map and project it easily and directly over what I see.
Map of Cambridge
Not the case here: the map is a standard aerial view, very map-like, and it's placed in a totally non-meaningful place. No emergent landmarks I can align to. But it applies local structure matching: if you take a closer look at the picture, you will see that in the lower right-end corner you have a neat arrow pointing North. East. Sorry, North, it says, but that is actually East is the normal cognitive map of geographic space.
Once I noticed that, and after subduing a sudden urgency to kick the panel hard, I was able to turn the map ninety degrees left in my mind and I started to go like “Now, here you are. Well, of course. Queen's College, indeed, and there's...” and then everything fell into place. What I experienced is well known in way-finding literature, and is commonly described as being turned around, a rather unpleasant feeling for sure. When relying on maps and not on direct observation it gets even worse, as spatial knowledge derived from them is normally orientation-specific and its even more easier to get lost.
All in all, this made for a very bad user experience. Since there was no emergent feature, a landmark to which I could immediately align the map and no graphical aid except for that small, unnatural East-pointing North pointer to tell me I needed to rotate, I read the map as we do with all maps, figuring North was up. This immediately threw me off, and I got lost.
Now, before you say that, the real issue I have with this is to see how someone obviously cared for this map but then blew it royally by not using simple common-sense: why not simply locate the map somewhere else, pointing North, leave defaults to be defaults, and have happier users? There, fixed it for you.
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Let's get banzai on this. This is a plain sandwich package served to passengers by KLM. It's a decently tasting line of sandwiches, and they even manage to have a fair turn-around, but that's not the point. Let's take a look at the packaging.
It's actually a rather neat package, airline-wise, as it allows easy and space-savvy stacking in the tight, space-hungry aircraft environment. It might be not entirely environment-friendly, but it sure helps storing and handling. And it looks stylish, Italian name and all (What? On KLM flights? Never mind).
Anyway, the usual scenario goes like this. Just when you are about to fall asleep you receive your sandwich package from the friendly flight assistant, so you fumble to open up your small tray table, you mumble a 'mmthnkya', and you get ready to eat your share of global food. The package looks friendly and easy enough. That little extra plastic jutting out on the left corner says 'pull me' in a soft soothing voice. It's aligned with the way we are supposed to scan the package, in a left-to-right fashion reinforced by the writing and the labeling. This is also consistent, ergonomically, with the majority of us being right-handed. Opening it up in your tight little personal bubble doesn't feel too constrained or cumbersome. Cool. You do it.
The foils comes away easily, the package deflates in that reassuring way that drives away all fears of botolinum and you smile that 'see, it was the altitude, I told you' kind of smile. And obviously, since the package peels from left to right, you tend to eat the sandwiches on the left first. You may even consider not stripping away the protective plastic foil at once, as you never know what to do with it then. And here disaster strikes.
The package falls miserably to the right as it gets unbalanced. And if it was too close to the tray edge, it is probably already resting on your dress, suit or shoes. Well, you say, after all it's just a plastic sandwich package for airline use, for heaven's sake. Mh. I beg to differ. First, that's precisely the situation where you do not want this kind of things to happen, since you may spill pesto sauce or chili dip on your lap quite easily and do not get to have extra clean pants for nightclubbing until you are back from Hong Kong, which kinds of spoil the fun. Second, the package actually
can stand even while you are eating away. Check this:
No tricks. In this picture it's just that the sandwich on the right was the first to go. In terms of user experience, the only real issue is the peeling: it should go from right to left, and not left to right. A rather trivial change at basically no added cost can make a great difference as far as your social life on the plane and in Hong Kong is concerned.
And for the sake of being picky, it would require just a little extra to make it even more visible and affordable with a little color, to win over that extra-resistance to actually open it up with your left hand. And finally, the plastic foil could be glued in the middle as well, where the package is split in two, to state the idea of 'eat these first' even more. Honest to God I'll stop falling for it and would not need a stain remover from the flight assistant ever again.
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