The ubiquitous, thoughtfully designed MetroCard machine has the cheerful demeanor of a kindergarten color-theory lecture. But soon the machine and the bright-yellow card that accompanies it will be replaced to make way for OMNY. KarrieUrbanist writes
vending machine. A case study from OMNY’s manufacturer, Cubic Transportation Systems, estimates the switch, which will begin early next year, will be complete by the end of 2023.
Udagawa describes the assignment as “disaster management.” The MTA had determined, after extensively testing the off-the-shelf Cubic machine, that “everyone hated it and couldn’t deal with it.” The problem, according to Udagawa, was that it “was designed by engineers” who didn’t think about how New Yorkers, a huge and wildly varied group of people, might quickly and easily get their cards.
The most important thing about the design, though, is how interaction is scripted in discrete steps. “There is one question per screen and nothing else you can do,” Udagawa explains. Refill an old card, or get a new card? Add more time or more value? Use cash or a credit card? One particular challenge in its adoption — remember, this was a decade before the launch of the iPhone — was just getting people to understand that you had to touch the screen to start.
But I only began to understand what made this mechanical object so lovable when Udagawa explained something he had learned while attending the Cranbrook Academy of Art in suburban Detroit. At the time, its design department was known for teaching an approach called “product semantics,” which encouraged students to redesign common household objects in expressive, often metaphoric shapes. “That was such a departure from the modernist tradition of form follows function,” recalls Udagawa.
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