OT: Who designs these thing?

[Jim K..]

Like more in prison that doing H.E.?

Like 2/3rds don't have passports?

Just a bit...:-)

[Jim K..]

Expect they're still wading through the nuances... ;-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Got a newish system at my local hospital car park. Pay on leave, with the choice of cash or credit cards. Three terminals - usually busy.

Normally pay cash and have the right amount with me.

This time, a bit of a delay. So didn't have the correct cash. All machines saying limited change.

So decided to pay by credit card. No touch facility - you have to slot in the card and enter your PIN. And the unit to do this is so low down I had to get on my knees to read it. In the rain. Even although everything else is touch screen at a sensible height.

Ideal bit of design. A car park - often used by the old and infirm - where things are situated at child height.

[charles]

wheelchair height

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, "Dave Plowman (News)" [e-mail]> writes

Huh! You think that was a problem. Car park meter, cash/card/pay by app. Unfortunately I inserted my card the wrong way round. Not only could the m/c not read the card but, because the embossed numbering was then tight in the slot, no amount of finger tip tugging would release it. Luckily most Harpenden fitness club members pay by app so I was able to fetch a pair of pliers from my hairdressers who fell about laughing!

>

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Pity about the touchsceen, then. ;-) And the cash slots.

[alan_m]

Public toilet in Bridgnorth - 20p to get in. No cash - only a card reader. It didn't work with the cards that American tourists had with them. I did take pity and added another 40p to my credit card bill.

[whisky-dave]

reminds me of something my dad used to say.

"Here I stand broken hearted, paid a penny and only farted" 20p quite cheap I think I'm sure the last one I can across in london was 50P

[Jethro_uk]

At least it was pay on leave. Not the licensed ripoff that is P&D where you inevitably end up overpaying.

[Jethro_uk]

I think US cards aren't contactless, nor C&P.

In some ways, USians are a bit behind us.

[Davey]

The version I knew was the same, except for 'sit' instead of 'stand', and 'spent' for 'paid'.

I haven't been to London and needed a convenience for many years, and the local one here is free.

[tim...]

US banking is still very much dominated by small banks in each city/state

Having your bank account with a national bank is not the majority position AIUI

Consequently, the individual banks are too small to invest in all this world wide hi tech stuff

tim

[S Viemeister]

Some US cards are contactless. Most are now chip&signature, a very few are chip&pin.

True.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes well its like the doctors where you are encouraged to sign in on a touch screen device, yet many of the clients are elderly have no idea what a touch screen is or blind like me who can't use it as there is no sound on the thing. The result as predicted is that everyone ends up at the reception just as before but they have wasted megabucks on a system nobody uses. Lack of research, or just too many young people in charge of the systems and not thinking clearly? Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes maybe they are but bet they still charge for disabled parking. They do in Kingston Hospital even though its capped at 2 quid per 24 hours.

I would have thought this was a use case crying out for contactless payment. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Sorry that is just not acceptable they mashed it up. Its not the first time I've seen this either. Brian

[Steve Walker]

Far more people in the UK suffer from back and joint problems and cannot bend down to low terminals than use wheelchairs - plus all those that have balance problems and don't want to bend over. By all means provide

*a* low terminal, but there should always be more at "normal" height.

SteveW

[T i m]

<snip>

Similarly, WTF would you want autorepeat on the keyboard when entering the registration number (or on any data-entry for that matter)? How often would you have repeated characters on your reg, or any card number or pin, where auto repeating would be an advantage?

Trying to help an old guy at a Hospital Car Park pay terminal and he was using (with no effect) his fingernail to 'press' the touchscreen keyboard.

I suggested he use the flat of his finger, showed him by entering a digit and deleted it again (giving him a blank screen) only to see him press and hold (as we would know it to be) and see a line full of the same character. ;-(

Had it not been a busy car park and he not been hard of hearing ... and had he realised what the clicks were indicating, he might have also got the audio clues.

The sun shining on the screen didn't help him either ... ;-(

I did report my thoughts / recommendations (esp re the autorepeat) to the Parking Co at the time but 'of course', received no reply.

Cheers, T i m

[Steve Walker]

I'm sure that these systems are never tested on normal people before they are sold.

So many obvious problems. Many of which would be resolved by very slight changes - one that gets me is electronic forms that require phone numbers to be entered without spaces, dashes or brackets (unlike the way most people write them) - just automatically remove them before storing the number!

Another is password entry. I fully understand why case is useful in making passwords more secure, but if every letter in the password is the reverse of the required case (caps-lock left on), why not accept it?

SteveW

[T i m]

<snip>

And that sort of thing is why I carry a pocket multi-tool with fine nosed pliers. ;-) [1]

Were you never a Scout Tim. 'Be prepared. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[1] Amazingly and even after what must be 20+ years of near daily use and (often) abuse, the needle nosed pliers on my Leatherman PST II's are still good enough to grab a splinter or hold a fine wire (to use as a 'pricker') or an actual needle (if you want to heat one up to make a hole in something or push one into the top of a blocked superglue dispenser).

This morning I sharpened (and tightened) a pair of shears and secateurs with the diamond hone and round jaws on the pliers for Mum (because we popped in and she asked me to look at them for her).

And no, the wire cutters on my PST II aren't strong enough to cut though your fences. ;-)