I thought I’d write up the BEST UX solution I’ve ever heard.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the website that described this, and I can’t recall the provenance, so take this with a grain of salt. It may be apocryphal, but even if it is entirely fictional, it is a good solution.
I also wish I could claim this as my own, but this solution comes from the days when I was in short pants.
The problem: West Texas is as flat as a billiard table. I suspect that most of the ‘flat earthers’ are from there, and if you saw that part of the world, you’d agree that they have a point if you rely strictly on immediate observation. As far as you can see, there’s nothing, just a flat horizon. The issue is that people tend to drive 90 mph in this environment because there are hundreds of miles between cities. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue since there’s nothing to hit. However, there are tiny towns, population of 20 or so, between the bigger towns, and drivers were bombing through these towns at top speed. That’s dangerous to driver and pedestrian.
How to solve such a problem? How do you get drivers to slow down when all they see are a couple buildings and no people? Normally, when given this problem, and this is an awesome question to ask potential UX Designers, there are common solutions, each with its own issue.
- Big signs saying slow down – problem is, big signs are at best ignored, at worst, handy targets for shooting practice.
- Turns or chicanes – the problem with curves is drivers are not paying attention and will fly off of any curves, especially at night. The curves have another issue in that they cost millions of dollars.
- Speed bumps – the problem with speed bumps is that drivers will hit speed bumps at 90 mph and either fly or ruin their axles.
I’m now going to add a few waste of space lines so the problem and solution are not on the same screen. As you scroll down, please think of how you, the reader, would solve the problem.
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Dune
Good movie
Great visuals
Better books
Who was the author?
The solution: Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find who did this, but I do know the Federal Government screwed it up in the 1980s.
The solution depends on the blank visual field in Texas, so you really had to go there and drive the highway to think of it.
The designer responsible realized that the visual field of a road and a blank horizon was manipulable. If you gradually shorten the lines between the lanes and make them appear more frequently as you get closer to a town, the driver will feel that they were going faster and slow down. They further manipulated the visual field by planting trees, starting miles from the little towns, at a specified distance apart, and gradually reducing the distance between trees, in the same proportion that the road stripes were being distanced.
To the drivers, going 90 mph started feeling like 110 mph, so they slowed down.
Once past the little town, the reverse was done, visually tricking to the drivers to speed up again.
As I was told, the drivers were asked after they went through the towns how fast they were going, and most of them reported they went through at normal highway speeds.
That, to me, is the best UX Design – the users were induced to do the right thing easily and naturally. The towns were safer, everyone was happy, all for the cost of repainting and planting some trees.
UX UNbound 