talking about design.

Chong Kai Qing
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

SMRT’s New LCD Display Boards

This story is inspired by an earlier article on SMRT’s new LCD display boards (https://www.techinasia.com/talk/smrt-new-display-ux-problem). Do check it out!

In his article, Yu Siang wrote about how the new SMRT display boards are poorly designed and cited them as “the perfect case study of how bad design can destroy a great idea” (ouch).

I decided to check them out for myself.

The good things first…

I like how the new display provides a countdown of when the door is closing. This gives us a better and earlier indication of when the door will start closing and creates a greater sense of urgency.

I also like that at each station and when travelling from one station to another, it is really clear what the next and current stops are. We no longer need to peep out of the MRT desperately in search of the signboard that tells us where we are. This is also particularly useful for people with hearing difficulties.

Finally, the display shows what the available exits in the next stop are and which exits to take to reach certain landmarks. I thought this was useful information especially for stations with multiple exits (think Raffles Place).

The display makes it really clear which station you are travelling towards and what the places of interest are at the various exits

Now on to the not so good things..

Firstly, the map of the train route. SMRT had opted to replace old display system (i.e. STARiS 1.0) that shows the full train network across the North-South and East-West lines with digital displays that do not. What we get instead is information telling us what the previous stop and the next 4 stops are and a fairly useless map of Singapore which does not convey anything useful except where the train ends. This presents several problems: 1) we can’t tell the number of stops to our desired destination (useful information when trying to gauge the estimated time of arrival) 2) we can’t immediately tell whether we are travelling in the right direction or on the right line.

The map of Singapore on the left display does not convey anything useful except for where the train ends

When travelling from one station to another, the display will showcase photos of key landmarks (debatable) located close to the next station. It is a nice idea but unfortunately, most of the photos are poorly taken (for some reason they are mostly close up images) and they do not convey any information about what the landmark is and what makes it a landmark. Some of the more prominent landmarks also failed to feature in the slideshow of photos (really unfortunate).

An example of a poorly taken photo (so bad, so so bad)

Thirdly, as you approach each station, the display shows blueprints of the lower platform and concourse levels of the station, highlighting in particular where the escalators, lifts, staircase and exits are. I personally do not find the information on where the escalators/ stairs/ lifts are located helpful. However, what makes the information useless is that it does not tell you which MRT carriage you are currently located in. Not knowing where you are makes it extremely hard to make sense of the blueprint and chart your route out of the platform. Moreover, the blueprint of the concourse level contains a lot of unnecessary and irrelevant information (e.g. lines and blue shaded areas that do not convey anything) that makes it really hard to read especially from afar.

Blueprints of platform and concourse levels contain too much unnecessary information making them hard to read

On a more general note, I also do not like how the display information is fully in English. The display also suffers from poor visual design — particularly its poor use of typography and lack of consistency — which makes it look really unprofessional.

Conclusion

All in all, I got to agree with Yu Siang that the new LCD display system is poorly designed. SMRT clearly did not consider the needs of commuters when designing the system. While SMRT has taken a good step towards rolling out digital displays, the poor design and execution limit the potential of these displays. I do hope that SMRT rolls out a new version soon though I doubt that this will be at the top of their minds with the increasingly frequent train faults.

(Update: SMRT recently changed the map view to an image that shows the full train route along the North-South Line!)

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