Bad Usability Getting Passes to the NMAAHC

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is very popular. Getting to go requires securing a pass, either by booking in advance, or by getting same-day passes starting at 6:30 AM. If you go to the page at 6:25 AM, you see this:

What does this mean?

The only information given is “No Tickets Available.” Does that mean:

1. There are no same-day passes available today?
2. Passes were given out early, and I missed it?
3. Passes will be available shortly, just hold on a minute?
4. Something else entirely that I’m not even thinking of?

There’s no way to know, and nothing to do but manually refresh the page. As it turned out, the answer was (3), and the page eventually (around 6:34) refreshed to display a choice of times to arrive. A better display for this page, in descending order of user-friendliness would be:

1. A countdown timer, promising to automatically refresh the page content when passes become available.
2. A countdown timer, telling the user to refresh the page when the timer hits zero.
3. A statement that the page will automatically refresh when passes become available. (I could swap options 2 and 3)
4. A statement that passes will be available shortly, and to come back (refresh) later.
5. Almost anything other than “No Tickets Available.”

Note that option (4) doesn’t require any code change, just a better product choice about the text to display.