Vim & Vision

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Poor Visual/Auditory Feedback Permalink

Interface Added less than a year ago

I've encountered two examples of systems with insufficient visual/auditory user-feedback in the last 10 minutes:

Go Card system on the bus

The system works by putting your card up next to unit that reads it whenever you board or alight - this is called 'touching on' and 'touching off' respectively. The system sometimes beeps when you press your card to it, sometimes not, and it has some lights on it that I think indicate how much money you have left on your card. When touching off this morning, the guy in front of me and I had the same charge ($0.00 as it was a continuation.) I think we had the same amount remaining in $ (but not ¢) so not much of a visual change was registered by me there (none in fact.) - there was no beep for him or me and we both had a green light - the light stayed on, it didn't flash on and off again when I touched off. The system doesn't work every time, often I have to use the other unit (there are two at every door) and sometimes I have to try touching off on the same unit as I just didn't put my card close enough to it. So I naturally figured the system didn't register my touch and touched off on the other unit instead - which accidentally touched me back on, so now I will have to pay a $5 charge.

Alarm system at work

Pressing the keys emits the same noise as the warning beeps that tell you the alarm will soon go off. How do I get feedback that my keypress worked if it's at the same time as a warning beep? I think we've all failed to press a key hard enough on an ATM or keyboard, which is why the keypress emits a beep in the first place - to provide auditory confirmation to the user.

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