Membranophonist’s Ramblings

I just got back from a few days in New York, where I was visiting a friend who is graduating from the New School’s jazz program. You can hear Nick’s trumpet playing at his site.

Using Wayfaring, I’ve created a map showing a few of the places we went.

I encountered several interaction design problems during the trip.

1. The parallax of the touch screen-based MTA card machines is too high, leading to mistakes when targeting small buttons such as the numbers on the screen that allows the input of arbitrary monetary values.
2. The need to select the screen language every time a subway card is filled could be removed by encoding the selected language preference on the card itself. A means of changing the language would be provided, but the step would no longer be required every time money was added.
3. More broadly, having to take different trains for the airport and the subway is just stupid. In Boston, the Blue T line takes you directly to Logan airport for a standard subway fare. The AirTrain to JFK is $5 each way. The trains are nice and have pretty good maps and clear announcements, but why a separate train system? I’m guessing it has to do with jurisdictional boundaries between the Port Authority (which manages the airport) and the state (which manages the subway).