All that money, and still there are usability faults

There has been a new parking barrier set up near to where I live, which was very expensive to install yet has a significant design fault. When queuing up for a ticket, I would notice people in their cars sitting and waiting for a considerable amount of time in regards to collecting a parking ticket and for the barrier to open. The driver and the passengers were also as astonished as myself for their prolonged waiting time, which was down to one simple fault. They couldn’t find the button to press to obtain a ticket and thus open the barrier!When looking at the ‘state of the art’ machine there is no indication that the tiny black button is required to be pressed so as to open the barrier. It is small and insignificant with no writing representing that this was the button to press. Then on another occasion I returned to see that they had thankfully altered the machine. The parking attendants, after probably become tired with telling people where to press, had brazenly placed a post it note with the words ‘Press this button’ on the ‘hi-tech’ machine.

I myself found this comical and ironic; how an expensive piece of technology was not customer friendly in the most basic ways possible. It just goes to show that there are still many errors designers make involving customer experience, and that on occasions there can be faults involved with the simplest part of technology which ultimately affect its usability. The user’s experience was lengthened for an unnecessary amount of time due to it’s inefficiency in easily guiding the user to the correct method of opening the barrier, which leads to frustration from the customer. Although this incident initially gave me the giggles, in hindsight I think it is embarrassing for designers and the parking company that bought it.