Getting the Bus Repaired

Our 1998 VW Bus (aka Transporter or Caravelle), has periodically given us trouble with the minor detail of starting, especially in the morning…  Having recently replaced the battery, we knew that wasn’t the culprit. Some mechanics suggested that our infrequent use (a few times a week, mostly within the city) might be the cause – that perhaps a slow leak was repeatedly draining the battery.  Having repaired or removed anything that might be draining the battery, I began to suspect that it was more than that.
I jumpstarted the car (again) and drove it to a VW garage. A few hours later they informed me that the problem was a combination of the starter and the coil heater – and both had to be replaced. They estimated the cost at 2500NIS (roughly $600).

The next day, I came to pick the car and settle the bill. After a few minutes of the service representative typing on his keyboard, he announced that I needed to pay 2800NIS. When I asked for details he turned his monitor around to show them to me – a clear example of a poorly-designed service environment. Instead of understanding the needs of customers and designing displays accordingly, the service representative has no alternative but to share his display with the customer.

The screen I was presented with, beyond its 1980’s DOS look, was clearly designed for the service representative and not the customer. It included part numbers and various codes that I neither understood nor cared about. All I wanted to see was a short summary of the price of parts and labor. I can imagine an information kiosk at which a customer could not only view the details of his bill without being confused by codes, but also learn a bit about mechanical issues – how about presenting, on demand, a picture of the items that were replaced and their location in the car? Or perhaps even a short video with a brief explanation of the system involved…

Yearly car inspection

A few days ago I took my aging car (1998) for its yearly inspection. For those of you who aren’t familiar with such inspections (particularly in certain countries in the Middle East…) let me just tell that it’s probably one of the least pleasant experiences one could have (except, perhaps, a root canal).

It starts with the pressure of not knowing whether you’ll pass or what you might have to fix in your car (and how much it will cost) to make you pass. In addition, you’ve got the pressure of following vague instructions (“Forward! Now stop! Neutral! Foot on!”) shouted out by the testers, who seem to be intent on showing off their authority by speaking in their own lingo to you, in a noisy environment (other cars, other testers) and then being visibly angry at you for not getting it right…

One exciting part of the inspection is an emission test performed with a dedicated device. The monitor is actually facing the driver (you can see I shot this out of my car window), bad lighting conditions and all...

Here's a close-up of the device on the left, displaying digits that are meaningless to the average person (and actually, like in this picture, only one of the tests seemed to be active):

As with other incidental-user situations, this device is intended for the person performing the test. However, the screen, being directly exposed to me (i.e. car owner acting as an incidental user) naturally grabbed my attention. I watched it worriedly, trying to guess how my car (and consequently my bank account) was doing by watching unfamiliar abbreviations and numbers, while following orders from the tester (“keep the engine at 2500rpm” etc). I was also trying to figure out the color coding (guessing that red is bad and green is good?) and the meaning of the numbers – I assumed that lower figures were better (lower numbers = lower emission). I was awakened from my reverie with the “Go! Move your car!” command fired at me by the tester. No indication on the screen of the device told me if the car had passed or failed, so I had to explicitly ask him, and hey – it passed with flying colors (actually green, in this case).

One way of taking the incidental user into consideration in this situation is adding another (bigger) screen positioned toward the customer, in addition to the existing screen (which would display more technical information). The customer screen would present only basic information (e.g. what is being checked right now, the results and a pass/fail message). Alternatively, the existing display could be made more understandable by using better terminology and clearer messages. The entire experience might be improved by providing customers with a ‘cheat sheet’ of the inspection process, including step-by-step explanations that would make the inspectors instructions less cryptic.