Tuesday 16 November 2010

TransLink

I've been a long-time critic of the TransLink website for its limited, stylised maps, poor descriptions of bus stop locations and generally confusing trip planner results. They've just launched a new website that is much prettier ... and exactly as useful as the old one, which is not enough. I'm not saying they haven't put some effort in here, because it's clearly been someone's year-long project to attach bells and whistles and generally polish things up. What I'm saying is that if you're going to redesign your website, take the time to run a usability study and find out where the problems are.

For most of your users, the problems will not be "the menus aren't animated enough" nor "I need the individual parts of my journey planner results to light up when I mouse over them". For me, the first thing I would say in that focus group would be: "when I get my journey planner results, I need to go elsewhere to load a map to figure out where my bus stop is, and even then I'm not sure I've got it right".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've heard they plan to make their data available to Google Maps before the end of the year.
PPS - If they can do that, surely they can integrate real maps in their own website.

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