If you’re reading this blog regularly, then you might remember reading here about a year and a half ago about how Helsinki Public Transportation is outfitting their buses, trams and metros with GPS devices so that you can track their whereabouts online in real time. For that post I’ve also included a screen grab where you could see a few vehicles moving in Helsinki downtown. Although the map looked a bit deserted, the promise of seeing that map full of movement, seemed wonderful. Back then they’ve promised to outfit all of their vehicles by the end of year 2008. I have paid another visit to see what has happened during this time.

This is a screen grab of the Public Transport Map today.

Quite busy. Now the image actually resembles the dynamic of the public transportation. Since I know there are a lot more buses than there are blue bus icons on this map, it seems that the main emphasis so far have been trams. Or it might have been a strategic decision not to show all the buses. Indeed, the map could become unintelligible had they decided to show all bus action. Everything considered, a very nice improvement. Particulalry when compared to the Web 0.5 attempt at providing a similar service for Ljubljana public transportation.

Besides bringing all those vehicles online, they have also added several very handy features.

First of all, now you can access the information about vehicle arrival times for all of the stops. Which is great. Going to town? Key in the name of your nearest stop, click the stop and voíla, you get a list of all departures for the next half an hour or so. Very convenient.

Besides stops, you can also use the map to look up streets and popular places in Helsinki. Just for the hack of it I entered rautatieasema, the Helsinki central railway station. The map zooms in and becomes chock-full of bus, tram, train and metro stops. There are literally dozens of them. Clicking any shows a real-time list of arrivals. Impressive and functional.

Having GPS in your pocket is great, although most of the time I know where I am and don’t really need it until I go hiking. Now, to know where that bus I’m waiting for is, that is something I want to know. I think that Helsinki Public Transport Map is a fantastic example of converging technologies delivering an entirely new value.

That said, the project is not flawless. Here are some of the things that would be great to see.

Color code the stops. Right now the bus and tram stop icons are almost identical. There’s no easy way to glance at the map. Rather you have to go pixel hunting to tell the difference between tram and bus stops. I know that they are using the standard symbols you can find in the city, but these are of little use on the net where you do not see tram tracks. The user should be able to tell the difference at a glance. The solution is really trivial: color coding. Why not use dark blue for bus stops, dark green for tram, orange for metro and red for trains? And while at it …

Unify symbols. It would be useful if the symbols for all types of transportation would be unified. Now bus and tram look too similar, but metro uses something completely different. Not to mention that for the local trains the bus symbol is used (as you can see in the image to the right) and in some cases for the trams too. It is confusing. Similar look and feel reduces the need to dissect information–it becomes immediately obvious.

Make it finger friendly. Wherever there are a lot of stops in a small area, it is excruciatingly difficult to click exactly the one you need. It can be a nerve-wrecking task to do so with a mouse, and is probably impossible to achieve on your sleek iPhone even with the tiniest of pinkies out there. It won’t cause any fat finger dailing, but is still annoying. Either add another zoom level, or add more space between stations even if their representation on the map should be true to reality.

Remove the Google layer. Since Google powers the map service, Google’s own layer of some tram and metro stops is shown. This does not provide any additional information—it only adds clutter. To add to confusion, the ones Google provides are almost always shown in the wrong location. Go figure. Getting rid of this layer would solve the problem.

Tower of Babel interface. Well, not really, but as it is now, the interface randomly mixes English and Finnish. Why not separate the two completely? And while at it, add Swedish too.

Documentation. The interface and functionality are without a doubt transparent to the developers, but less so to everyone who would find this service useful. Write a brief help. It helps to disambiguate functionality and adds confidence to the user.

I hope that they will address these in the near future. In the meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the next version.

Mladen

Over the summer I’ve had a chance to test-ride N80, one of the high-end Nokia smartphones. You know, the one that is listening while you’re talking. At first all the functionality got me really excited and I was really looking forward to using it for all kinds of practical things on the go. N80 looked promising on paper, but failed to deliver on many accounts. It sure can do practically all the things I have expected, but it is a pain to use. Here’s a list of nine things that have annoyed me from day one.

It takes longer to boot than my G4 PowerBook (heck, it takes almost as long as any Windows PC). I used to keep my Windows computer running around the clock so that I didn’t have to spend Windows minutes when I wanted to use it. That probably saved me several days every year. N80 reminded me of those days, because it takes almost a minute from turning it on to when I can start using it. Only that it cannot stay up all night, because …

Battery does not have a life. This phone is a real power hog. Seriously, I need to charge it every other day even though I hardly ever used it. Has anyone at Nokia tested this device before sending it to production? Try using Wi-Fi and N80 drains the battery in a couple of hours. In other words, it’s better to use it with the phone plugged right into the grid. Goodbye to everything wireless. Oh, my.

Proprietary connectors and expensive cables. N80 leaves an impression that Nokia lives in a bubble where widely adopted standards do not exist. Even though this is a high-end phone it has no USB and no regular earphone jack. It uses proprietary cables, connectors and adapters that cost more than they are worth. It’s like buying a book for which you need special glasses to see the vowels. No thank you.

Wi-Fi reception is incredibly poor. When I first started using this phone I thought, great now I can check for available Wi-Fi spots without firing up the computer and walking around town like a dork before I find one. Boy was I wrong. This phone does not find nowhere near as many as that old PowerBook of mine does.

Performance like we’re in 1995 again. It takes literally a couple of seconds from sliding the phone open until the background light goes on and you can start using the phone. Add a few more when opening and  SMS you’ve just received. Even something as simple as opening N80’s phone book takes long enough to want me memorize all the numbers stored there. Image gallery? Don’t. Even. Think. About. Opening.

An odd bunch of useless software. Nokia had to come up with their very own browser, but are unable to develop even a decent text editor. Both suck. Does Visual Radio sound revolutionary? It is, just check the cool Web site at visualradio.com and you’ll known instantly why you’ve never heard about it (and never will). The audio recording software that comes with the phone can miraculously record only one minute of sound. 60 seconds. Useful for what?

Let there be buttons, many of them. Product functionality does not seem to be a coordinated activity at Nokia. Seriously, the phone has 27 buttons and it does not even have a full keyboard. What a waste. Multimedia button? I’ve pressed it only once to see where it leads. After that I’ve used it only to show people how useless it is. Yes, the keypad might present an incredible design accomplishment to Nokia, but is difficult and clumsy to use at best.

Phone is ridden with usability stupidity. The phone interface feels like it has been designed by programmers during lunch breaks when the interface design team was away. Let’s add weird icons and surprise our users with what those buttons do. How about making it impossible to view the date and time anywhere else but on the home screen? Check. Has anyone ever heard of copy-pasting? Switching between applications? Switch what? Switch the phone, I say.

Let’s make it short-lived. In the age of hyper-consumerism, the shorter the lifespan of a product, the better off is the company making it. You’ve guessed right, the N80 I’ve used is dead. Although the reason is not really low-tech, it is just as stupefying. The phone expired when the cable connecting the sliding part of the phone cracked. At Nokia they surely knew people will be sliding their phones open and shut (I mean, they designed it so) but they still installed a 2-cent cable that effectively obliterated a 400 Euro phone. Not that the cable looks like it could take the strain it ought to.

The verdict? N80 sucks and obviously I am not the only one to complain. But the real problem is that things are not getting better. I’ve talked about most of these issues at Ars Electronica in Linz back in the fall of 2006 with Matt Jones, who was participating at a panel as Nokia’s user-experience design director. Back then I complained about disappointing experience with Nokia’s Internet tablet N800. I was hoping to hear a reaffirming reply that, yes, we are aware, working on it, please give us a couple of years to polish things out. But was surprised when the gentleman carefully listened, took a deep breath, acknowledged that these really are important issues and apologized for delivering a disappointing experience. Not exactly what I have expected, but at least he had not tried to comfort me, since things really have not changed. And I’m sure he knew what I was talking about as he was working then on the N-series phones, the mothership of N80.

Most other phone manufacturers are not much better (which is probably why Nokia doesn’t bother changing anything). I’m glad I had a chance to try out the N80. However, I’m switching from smart and useless to brick and handy before I get a pop-up notification saying that I have unused icons on my phonetop. Downgrading to good ol’ 1100.

Mladen