Travel Tools

Transport for London

posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 05 December 2008

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Travel_tools_icons-medium

Tags

customise, environmental, icon, information, interface, locations, london, mapping, mobile, transport, underground

So TfL launch a bunch of useful looking travel tools, some of which are intended for downloading to use on mobile phones. The icons look suspiciously like iPhone buttons, but I can't see iPhone in the list of compliant phones. Shame on you TfL.

See the list: www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/mobileservices/other.asp

See my post about iPhone: www.dynamolondon.org/projects/117


http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/traveltools/default.aspx

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what's been said

posted by Matt Cooper
on 05 December 2008

The widgets will inherit the earth

A good example of the way that miniature focused bits of content are more useful than lumbering corporate websites. Funny that the limit of size imposed by devices and '2.0ness' helps to refocus website designers back to the most important bits of content.

I imagine that between the 12 or so widgets here TfL have probably covered 80%+ of visitors needs. The 100s of pages of press releases and subsections and so on are way down on the list.

The travel tools link above should in fact be TfL's homepage.

Having said that, there is still superfluous information here. I mean who honestly needs the Departure Board stuff?

p.s. Malcolm, surely you can use you iPhone to go directly to the site, who needs WAP?

WAP is the ceefax of the 90's.

posted by Andrew Beattie
on 06 December 2008

Long Live WAP

So. Lets make a guess at what is behind each of these just for fun:

1st row: Multimode / time-tables / route planner / engineering alerts 2nd row: Night bus / ???? / ???? / another route planner 3rd row: ???? / Tubemap or another route planner/ Dodgy minicab using a mobile phone / ???? 4th row: Last-first tube / Departure board.

At least if these were WAP, you would hopefully know what’s behind them by reading the description ;-)

posted by Malcolm Garrett
on 08 December 2008

TfL Direct

Yes, you can go directly to the TfL site using iPhone - the "lumbering corporate" website - but some mini-apps would be handy. I agree with you about the TfL tools page becoming the real home page in consumer usefulness terms.

I think my point here was that despite Apple, once again, having such a direct influence on the appearance and functionality of all computers, both handheld and desktop, the other manufacturers who are still playing catchup somehow still rise to the surface.

posted by Matt Cooper
on 08 December 2008

David Mac vs. PC Goliath

true. Apple visual style has become so pervasive that i suppose its now possible to 'ape' apple without really having used the interface.

Or worse, the interface designer sits at a Mac and uses the visual language of that operating system. Yet the system developers sit on a PC and deliver functionality from that world.

Only when form and function are developed in tandem do great interfaces emerge. This isn't there yet.

p.s. is the iPhone user share big enough to warrant a bespoke interface? Hopefully it should be soon.

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