Happy New Year everyone! The contributors to Reading Toronto wish you all the best for 2007.

Last night Sarah and I decided to take the TTC to a friend's new year's eve party (remember, don't drink and drive). We did not know which bus to take from the Woodbine subway station so decided to do what many Net users would do - go online and find out. That seemingly simple task turned into an odyssey of navigating bad information design that defies the imagination. The TTC Internet site has to be the single worst information site found anywhere. It is a true embarrassment. Can you make any sense of this:



It took us about a half an hour to find the information we needed. We succeeded only after consulting the web site, getting a bus number, then calling the TTC Information Line. Can you imagine what the experience is like for foreign visitors to our city. No wonder tourism is down.

During the recent civic elections I met the TTC's new Chair, Adam Giambrone. He is bright, committed, and genuinely interested in making the city a better place to live. Adam, maybe the way the TTC connects with Torontonians is a logical place to start.

We have a challenge and an offer for the TTC: Toronto bloggers are more than willing to offer their insights into how the TTC site might be designed (look at the reaction to a proposed route map). Why not give us a call and ask for our input. We'd be able to go to our readers for their ideas too. This makes sense to us and takes advantage of the "Wisdom of Crowds," phenomenon the Internet provides.

WIll the new Chair take us up on our offer? Stay tuned.

1. From their inconsistent system maps, embarrassing web site, incredibly poor informational posters or the unexplainably out-dated use of tokens and tickets, plainly this is an organization that has a dim view of design. Of course there are many issues at stake for the TTC, but it would appear that so many of their problems – including revenues – could be improved with seemingly simple and straight forward design implementations. Let’s hope the new Chair and his good relationship with the folks at Spacing will bear some prodigious fruit.

   Posted by Peter  on  01/01  at  12:11 PM

2. Hi Peter, happy new year to you and yours…

   THis is one of those “Tipping Point” issues. If the TTC can’t do something as fundamental to success as getting route information out to users, then imagine what is happening with the really complex issues.

   Good design is important. Without it, nothing of lasting value is achieved.

   Posted by Editor  on  01/01  at  12:34 PM
4. The fan-built TTC map you mention in the post has actually been improved and there's more discussion on this topic at Spacing Wire.
   
   Posted by Patrick Dinnen  on  {comment_date format=’%m/%d’}  at  {comment_date format=’%h:%i %A’}
Posted by Patrick Dinnen  on  01/01  at  02:58 PM

5. The TTC surely needs to fix the online tools it provides to users.

   But, perhaps more important, it needs to free the data by publishing all of it as a standard feed—routes, stop location coordinates, schedules, even real-time GPS as it becomes avaialble.

   That will let third parties develop their own transit-tracker tools and maps, and truly tap into the wisdom of the crowds. Whatever the TTC comes up with, it will never be better than the aggregate of what all dedicated fans and interested developers might invent on their own.

   Freeing the data, by publishing it to standards in a way that lends itself to third-party developers, is the way to take advantage of that.

   Posted by  on  01/03  at  12:27 AM

6. YES!!! Their website is horrible!

   #1 suggestion in my books (beside making things ont he site easier to find) would be a trip planner. eg an area where I say there I am and where I want to go and it tells me what busses/trains/ferries I have to take. When I used to live in Sydney, Australia I used the Sydney one religiously (helped when I was new to the city)
   http://www.131500.info

   Posted by marc  on  01/03  at  03:08 PM

7. The TTC, to quote Joe Clark, is run by a bunch of “jumped-up motormen” who have no clue that design and aesthetics even exist, much less that they are important. Thus we get a web site that is unusable, inconsistent and unusable signage, and route change placards attached to walls with packing tape. The system runs like shit and it doesn’t even look good. Yay.

   Posted by thickslab  on  01/03  at  05:02 PM

8. Several others have had issues with the TTC website for some time, notably ex-University of Toronto Professor Elaine Tom’s students, Natasha Flora and Anthony Hempell, who proposed a complete redesign in 2003 for a Faculty of Information Studies project, see http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/graduate/students/documents/toms2.pdf. Councillor Giambrone, hopefully you will take these suggestions to heart!

   Note that a tender for the TTC website redesign has already gone out and has closed, apparently, on Nov 23th, 2006: http://www2.ttc.ca/gsop&s/P01DR06363.HTM, so now is the time to let the TTC know what we’d like to see.

   In addition, the Councillor Giambrone also contacted Google Transit in March 2006 regarding integrating the TTC’s route info into the Google Transit route-planning interface, so maybe that will be rolled out as part of their updated site: http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/weblog/2006/03/21-the_ttc_an.shtml and coupling this with Ian Steven’s awesome Google Maps/Transit Route mashup would be great: http://crazedmonkey.com/toronto-transit-map/

   Posted by  on  01/05  at  12:13 PM

9. Sorry, the URL for the Faculty of Information Studies project mentioned above did not get parsed correctly by the blog software. It is:

   http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/graduate/students/documents/toms2.pdf

   Posted by  on  01/05  at  12:16 PM

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