On 18 June, 18:57, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:37:17 +0100, "tim....."

wrote:

"Ben Birkner" wrote in message
....
Thanks, Mizter T. I frankly have never noticed any displays at gates
or in buses
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No, that's because it's only there for a micro second and impossible to read
as you are pushed forward by the next person waiting to use the machine, I
don't think I can name a dumber design on a piece of electronic intended for
use by the consumer

As the design is not really any different to those on thousands of gates
in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong who all had stored value ticketing
long before London I trust you will go and direct your criticism at them
first. *Then you can bare in mind that all of those systems handle
massive flows of passengers on higher capacity gates than we have in
London and seem to cope with little or no problem. *Finally you may also
wish to consider the need to balance the ability of a passenger to see
their balance for a short period of time with displaying the info for
too long thus allowing criminals and pickpockets to target people with
large amounts of value on their cards.

You may think it was all chucked together with no thought but it wasn't.

But the newer gates display it OK, so there can't have been a policy
decision not to display it. The criticism was surely for the tiny
unlit display in the pad that you've already gone past unless you
block the exit while peering at it.

I don't know that it's dumb, rather than done within technical
limitations, but it's true that the result is not very helpful. I
wonder if a display could be built into where the green arrow is, but
maybe the wiring would be too difficult.