This event took place 2 weeks ago. I thought I will blog about it since well, it’s related to user experience =)
I was waiting for Bus 54 at the bus stop outside my place. When the bus approached the stop, I noticed it had an unusual bus plate design. This I noticed since I have taken this bus many a number of times. When I stepped up the bus, the first thing I noticed was its interior design. Yes, the local public transport actually had an interior design! Wow!
It had cushion seats in sleek white that ran around the edge of the bus. Some parts where there was no cushion seat, there were armchairs instead. Armchairs of those type where you had nice arm-rests and could lounge in. The concept of the design was to make it like that of a classy bar. There were even tall chairs and a bar counter look-alike (Just the tall table) at one side of the bus. Contemporary pop tunes (At that time, it was Jet‘s Are You Gonna Be My Girl) was playing away in the background adding to the sensuous mood of the bus. This was not a bus, this was a classy wine bar on the move!
A lady in black got on the bus. I was sitting on one of the white cushion seats near the exit and saw her approached my direction. At that time, the bus was fully seated and there was one or two standing passengers. She walked down the length of the bus, from the entrance to the exit. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. When she finally passed me by, I took up the courage and stood up to give my seat to her. After all, that’s the least somone would do for a pregnant lady who had walked the length of the bus as I had described.
The bus company tried to create for its passengers an experience of luxury and class but other than the appearance, I thought it fell short in every other aspect. The background music was a good idea that irritated me eventually when the tracks kept skipping and pausing uncontrollably. A decent four-minute tune played out over five or more minutes with jarring pauses and skips. I’d rather there was no music.
The bus driver had terrible driving skill, making sudden brakes for almost every occasion causing the ride to be a very unpleasant one since we would get jolted every five minutes or so. The passengers had no regards for others around, chatting at the top of their voice, or as I mentioned earlier, not giving up their seats to the more deserving. The back of the bus had the white cushion seats in an L-shaped manner and that meant no one could sit at the very corner since they had pratically no space to let their legs hang. In fact, a boy simply sat cross-legged, shoes-on, on the white seat. The nature of the placement of the seats and layout meant the seating capacity was dramatically reduced as compared to the usual service while the standing space remained the same. I was glad I took the bus at an hour where jams were highly unlikely to occur.
All in all, the design was good but the experience was bad. I didn’t like the music, didn’t like the design that much after all, didn’t like the driver. It’s a public bus to be used by the public. We are the users and obviously, the design was not bus-user-centric. I think if it was a midnight-party bar on the move, it would have been superb. But not as a mid-day transport means.
My take on public transportation: Stick to just being a public transport and improve on their arrival timings rather than the interior decorations…
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