OK – it’s how many years that we Londoners are using the oyster card as means to get around town? That’s those of us who can’t afford the Bugatti just yet with the congestion charge on top of course. Two or three years? We’re about to approach three years if I am not mistaken.

There is a clear benefit in relieving the waste disposal of several dozens of tons of waste a day through replacing the paper based tickets with a plastic card with a money charged chip on it (yes we’re talking RFID). But the Oyster Card has also changed our experience when travelling.

In the past four days three friends of mine were caught in three separate instances in the barriers simply because they did not have sufficient funds on their prepaid card. And all were totally baffled, insisting that they have travelled on that very day enough to qualify for a day ticket.

You don’t know what that means? Well let me explain: There is a special tariff: a day ticket. With this ticket you can use public transport as much as you want for the duration of a day – you simply pay a fixed amount of money. The pricing scheme is designed to make this day ticket attractive if you use the tube more than three times a day. For a sprawling city like London that makes this ticket very attractive for a lot of people.

The Oyster Card is supposed to work like this: You use it on the Railway, Tubes, trams and buses and as soon as all the single tariffs accumulate a day tickets worth the Oyster card allows you to travel as if you would have bought a day ticket at the start of your journey.

My friends, who were so surprised at not having enough funds on their Oyster Cards all thought that the heavy use of their oyster card on this very day made them qualify for the day ticket tariff.
Now the question is are my friends all really crap in maths or was the “system” wrong.

Well it doesn’t really matter here – since it’s worth pointing out one major thing: We are not longer consciously aware of how much we pay for public transport since the experience of paying for a journey has significantly changed.

In pre-Oyster Card times we had to make our minds up whether we will use the transport often enough on the very day to opt for a day ticket. And there was no doubt whatsoever how much we paid for the travelling. Today we trust a system to cap it in our favour. And since it is out of our hands, we automatically foster some form of distrust.

Is it a fair question to ask how good we feel about using Oyster Cards and trust them to cap in our favour? I for one know that I would love to have a little switch on my Oyster Card which I can press knowing that on my first “Touch-In” I will have started my day ticket!

After having passed this device so many times on the way to my favorite post office, I thought I record it for future generations.

For everybody to see, this is a box fitted with two phones (the second one being on the other side) and a cash machine. Obviously the company behind it combined the two applications based on the usage of the same infrastructure and thought this would be a good idea. Which it might be - with the cash machine doing significantly better.

Since the usage of the two services is in terms of interaction very similar, I thought it might be quite interesting to put this academic question forward: How would a device look like which combines the two services? How would one use it? What would the user experience be like for the respective services?

Although roomy, quick and clean, the most interesting thing about Singapore’s underground system is not traveling on it, but planning your trip and purchasing your ticket (at least from an interaction design perspective). Both these steps are in fact integrated into one machine and are part of the same process:
The main interface of ticket machines consists of a screen embedded into a backlit map of the entire underground system. This map, however, not only visually aids the customer’s choice of destination, but is actually touch-sensitive. So after choosing, say, the single-ticket option from the screen on the left, customers select their destination by pressing the respective station.
If one assumes that the average traveler’s picture of the underground system is that of its standard map, then this process appears to be much more intuitive and ultimately superior to selecting a destination from a multi-page alphabetical list (as is the case in London or Berlin). This combination of selection and purchasing, however, also has its disadvantages as undecided customers may block the machines for those who know where they are heading.

Single-trip tickets are dispensed in the form of reusable plastic cards (contactless smart cards using RFID technology), for which a S$1 refundable deposit is payable (about 50 Euro cent). This approach not only saves ink and trees, but effectively eliminates any wastage resulting from used tickets, as the cards are fed back into the machine to reclaim the deposit.

It is somewhat peculiar, by the way, that I did not find any ticket machines at Changi Airport station to get my dollar back before flying home…

Berlin winters can be notoriously cold dark and depressing (as many other places in the northern hemisphere). Families take their kids to school in the dark, and then go to work in the dark and then by the time school and work are over its dark again.

It was when watching one young family all on bikes, on one of those dark dark journeys to school, we came up with a little idea: a simple, customisable, engaging replacement for these numerous reflectors parents cover their kids with in order to make sure they can be seen by other traffic participants.

On one side the badges would be covered with super bright LEDs, which play simple individualised animations. On the underside the badges are covered with solar cells, charging capacitors.

So during the day, when at school, the badges could be turned over and laid onto the window sill catching light beams.

And once back at home the kids would have the possibility to assemble their very own animations on a PC and play the animation onto the device via a USB connection.

In our temporary new abode in Berlin (yes we open another studio in Berlin), these two fellow sit proudly in the bathroom. Not under the sink or hiding in the cupboard - but proudly placed above the bath for every inhabitant or visitor to see. They haven’t necessarily redesigned themselves for their public outing. They happily turn, numbers rotate (as I suppose they did before), as I wash my face, rinse my hands, or flush the loo.

For all my time in London I don’t think I have ever come face to face with a water metre in the bathroom. In fact, the amount of water I consumed was so obscure to me and my many landlords, that it was something that was only settled vaguely, without any real understanding (on either side) upon moving out.

So it was a surprise seeing these fellows waiting, dials at the ready, when I arrived here. Although the relativeness of what I am consuming is not absolutely clear, the awareness that I am consuming is very apparent and has an effect.

There is no data interpretation here, no fancy interface it is just a metre. The classic ‘dashboard metre’ is a pleasing functional old school interface that runs at real time. A simple example of form follows function, no need for a filter layer between. The circlar movements of the dials are absorbing, especially when they change and start turning at different speeds. And the object as a whole integrates well with the functionality of the bathroom, a subtle functional reminder.

There is a big push now to make everyone aware of what and how much they are consuming. Metres are being redesigned, eco-chic gadgets are being created and information is being interpreted to communicate simply to households what is going on silently and invisibly in their house. This is fantastic and I am certainly going to sign up for a free realtime energy monitor, especially if it correlated in such a way that it helped me understand my quarterly bills (but that is a whole different post).

But just from my small experience with my old school dials, I am wondering what needs to be redesigned to help us become more aware and what could we simply bring out from under the cupboards and re-integrate into the everyday life of our homes.