After hundreds accidentally get multiple Key cards, SEPTA takes a step to fix confusing kiosks

So far, McIntire finds the machine just as abstruse as its predecessor. “ I don’t even know what a travel wallet is, and I don’t know what ‘add’ means at this point,” he says.

By a stroke of luck, it turns out that “Add Travel Wallet” is the right choice. The next screen asks how much he wants to put on, offering a number pad. McIntire types in $10.00 and then pays using his credit card, confusion free.

But the moment of clarity doesn’t last.

Earlier, PlanPhilly talked to McIntire about why SEPTA should care about bad UX. He said it was bad for business and pointed at Uber.

SEPTA’s ridership has dropped since Uber and Lyft began operations here. Riders who would have waited for a bus are now ordering a ride through their smartphones. It may be in his interest to do so, but McIntire gives credit to the new competition’s UX.

“They put design front and center. They made it their main focus, making sure their app was ridiculous easy to use,” he said. “It’s even kind of fun to use, when you see the little cars moving around the screen.”

“I’m positive that has a lot to do with their success, is just that they made it so easy for you to get a car.”

SEPTA Key makes it hard for you to get what you want. The kiosks require people to slow down, stop, and read, expend mental energy they’d rather spend on work, contemplating the news, or figuring out what they want to eat for dinner.

Forcing riders to figure out a new system effectively assigns them homework for a class they didn’t sign up for.

And more frustratingly for SEPTA’s kiosk users, many were failing that assignment, ending up unexpectedly with a second card that might as well come stamped with a red ‘F’.

Testing out the reload function now, McIntire says that problem, arguably the largest with the system’s UX, appears solved: Users shouldn’t mistakenly end up with a second card any more.

The new interface replaces the initial screen. Instead of a singular button screen that, whenever touched, sent users down the path to a new card, passengers will now see three buttons: One for one-way trips, one for getting new cards, and a third for reloading an existing card, which points users toward the card reader nearby. If users touch ‘Reload Key Card’, the next screen directs them again to the reader on the side.

McIntire does this and arrives at an account status screen that momentarily gives him pause. There are no real options here — it just shows how much money and what kind of passes are on the card.

McIntire once again picks ‘Add Travel Wallet’ at the next screen, lamenting the technical jargon. “I don’t know what it means to ‘purchase a transit pass’ and I don’t know about the ‘add wallet’ thing,” he says. “All they got to do is change the language. They just have to say: ‘Put money on my card,’ just like the screenshots that we sent them told them to do.”

He goes to add money and muses, “I wonder if there is a minimum?” He sees none. “No, good, so I can add a buck.” McIntire punches out $1.00 into the paid, hits next and waits for the next screen to load. A few seconds later, it does.

“Business rules not satisfied?!” McIntire exclaims, reading the argot-filled error message that has popped up. “So I can only add ten dollars?” That is the minimum, even though SEPTA has heard hundreds of customers complaints about being prevented from adding the $2 in their pocket — sufficient for one transit fare — onto their SEPTA Key.

Experiment over, McIntire declares the pilot a partial success. “They solved that main problem,” he says, meaning the issuance of multiple cards. “It’s all about iteration — incremental change, that’s okay.”

SEPTA says they have no further tweaks to the user interface planned at this time, but McIntire hopes that will change as the authority grows to appreciate the drop in customer complaints that’ll accompany the improved UX.

“We’re getting there. Baby steps, right?”