Design ideas for IT in public spaces

This paper examines the usability issues involved in ticketless travelling with an airport train. The main contribution of this paper is that it describes actual use situations in detail. We show how users’ intentions are difficult to anticipate, unless in explicit communication, e.g., with people whose job it is to help out with using the system. Being conspicuously assisted, however, only aggravates a situation where users usually prefer anonymity. Given a “private in public” type of design, users had little chance of learning from watching others. Moreover, users were quickly annoyed when they struggled with the machine. They seemed to treat it as an agent for the provider rather than an assistant or tool for themselves. At the end of this paper, we outline and illustrate some new design ideas, which we think ought to be considered for future designs of IT in public spaces.