Exact Change

Picture found on the web from Joan Gentry of http://www.santafephotogallery.com

I was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey. I have taken more buses than I can count. Thinking back.....the thing I remember the most is seeing exact change signs.

Fare 55 cents. EXACT CHANGE ONLY."(Yeah that was a long time ago.)

They made sure it was the first thing you saw when entering the bus.

I didn't realize how long these signs have been around till I saw this photo."EXACT FARE" is written on the right of the door. Amazing. This is one of the oldest form of recorded usability I've seen in the US. Why?? Ok, I'm going to drop some Sociology on you.

The difference between a person from a city and from a rural environment is stimulus. A person from rural America comes from a low stimulus environment. They get to know names of their mailmen, neighbors, and people at the grocery store because the amount of people they see is low. So the majority of people become more welcoming and helpful to strangers. A sign for "Exact Change" is unnecessary and passing thousands of people a day is not plausible.

A person who grew up in a city is from a high stimulus environment. To stay alive and not get over loaded, we have a smaller group of friends, and we do not remember names well ...especially a mailman or bus driver. We do not look into the face of everyone that we pass by or show concern. Things like the bystander effect happen.

Public transportation during rush hour is one of the highest point of stimulus in a city. In a matter of minutes the variance of time, bus driver, bus, and customers change. In this extremely high stimulus activity, it is unreasonable for a bus driver to give change to every customer. It would make the entire trip unusable. Energy and time would be focus around collecting money instead of getting you to your designation in a timely matter. This is the ultimate purpose of public transportation.

This is where usability comes into play. To make the bus usable, a process had to be created and applied. Enforcing this process made the trip faster, and allow a viable option for people to take a bus.

Seeing this work so well is a main reason why I started this blog. Why not find a ways to apply usability to our daily lives. To focus on the core reason why a system exist, we need to find ways to make high stimulus activities, low stimulus. One of usability major strengths, is to clarify purpose and existence of a product.