This lovely piece of work is in a multistory car park in Ipswich in the UK. There are two lifts next to each other and something must have broken or been changed in one of them meaning the usual function of one button calling whichever lift is next free no longer works. The engineers have obviously had to remove the old panel and install a new one. They should have fixed the source problem, of course, but they have made the whole thing even more hilariously worse by installing a second “button” that is this huge module. It doesn’t fit and they can’t re-cable it, so the bodge solution is to install as picture above.
To top it off, they’ve had to put on stickers to explain which button does what. Extra labels always being the sign of badly thought through interfaces (that link is NSFW, by the way).
Why does this matter? Well, as an Englishman who has lived in Germany for many years, this level of workmanship is just shocking and something you would never see in Germany. More important is what it signals about the care the owners of the car park are going to take of your car and personal safety in the place. The whole thing screams, “we don’t care.”
Tagged as:
service-design,
touchpoint,
touchpoint obervatory,
UK
In Germany, mobile phone contracts are 24 months by default, not just for an iPhone. Additionally, there is a culture here whereby contracts are automatically renewed for a year (in some industries, two years) if you don’t quit the contract in writing, three months before the end of it. Of course, most people forget and hate their telco forever more. The telcos haven’t got their head around this yet.
Pre-pay accounts are, of course, a lot easier, but you usually have to provide some kind of ID. I saw this vending machine in Heathrow airport – the first time I’ve seen the possibility to just buy a SIM card without any human interaction and just start using it. The vending machine appeared to be provider neutral, with all the big networks represented. Interestingly, some of the SIMs were just data-only, which is a sign of the times for mobile telcos (VOIP killed roaming, so let’s sell them data instead).
It is also a reminder that SIM cards are really the only product that the mobile telcos sell. The handsets are sold by the manufacturers, subsidized by the telcos (who also get a cut, of course). Telephony is pure service.
Tagged as:
mobile,
service-design,
telcos,
touchpoint,
Touchpoint Observatory