I’d see this as a real problem if we hadn’t spent a hundred years just going to the platform and waiting for the next train to arrive whenever it did.
These are actually not MTA displays, they represent a business venture by a local company called Control Group. The MTA has allowed them to place them in stations, and is giving them train info, but their main purpose is to generate advertising revenue.
once again, the game of how much will consumers put up with before they go away. IOW, making money for an entity at your expense.
You are the cow that they want to milk.
I might remember those products but only so I can not ever buy them.
It’s the least I can do.
It only works if people look at them. The only subway ads that I ever remember are for Dr. Zizmor.
Yeah but try not looking at a moving ad, especially with a face in it, even if it’s in your peripheral vision. There is a cost, and it’s paid by everyone existing in that environment. Insights, realizations, creative thoughts, solutions to problems, reduction of stress, clever turns of phrase, the next bars in a melody, remembering that thing you’ve been trying to remember, a deeper understanding of the world from stitching together events separated in time, progress in developing your internal personal narrative: these are all the things you don’t get when something’s hijacking your attention.
They are, indeed, completely fucking useless, and, were I to teach a UI design class (admittedly unlikely) they would be among the examples I would use of horrible, “they actually payed someone money to make this?!?,” so bad that you’d almost think the designer was trolling us, UI design.
Damn, I thought we had it bad in Chicago. There are several different types of displays, some show ads, and they’re all pretty annoying (seriously, you do not need to thank me for riding CTA every 15 seconds). But they’re not nearly this bad.
Creating something this stupid, that has to be part of everyone’s daily life, should be illegal somehow.
Do you ride the MTA much? It’s remarkably easy to learn to screen out pretty much everything but your book after a while.
I ride it every day and literally had not even noticed that these ads had been installed until this article. Finally saw one at 34th Street on the way home, but already have no idea what it was an ad for. I must pass ten ads on the platform to where I stand, the only one I remember is for the Psycho TV series, but I have no idea what channel it’s on.
MTA gets money for ads limiting my MetroCard price increases with zero impact to me? Win.
But… the video implies these weren’t just placed–they re-placed the old style non-ad filled, functional ones. If that’s true, than I’d be pissed too.
It must be my weak and suggestible mind. I reacted the same way when my city library installed screens running an attract loop over all the checkout desks. I really value my mental dwell time, and it’s hard to come by.
No, just twice, never regularly. I did use MARTA for a while. (“It’s Smarta!”)
The ads are unbearable enough, however what’s worse? The wait times they suggest for trains are often WRONG.
Waiting for the Brooklyn-bound Q at Union Square, I’ve seen wait times as high as 8 or 9 minutes right as a Q was pulling into the station, and vice versa, have been fooled into waiting for a Q train when I could have taken an N into BK.
Seriously thought Control Group had better user experience chops than this.
What those LCD panels need is a live streaming video of Dr. Zizmor practising his healing art.
Don’t forget about how Dan Brown Can Teach You Guitar!
Why are they touchscreens anyway? Or is that a rude question?
Thought, most likely not even mine. Wraparound VR goggles, with cameras, and software for filtering the visual stimuli. And other processing, like making a HDR version of the surroundings, with details in both the lights and the shadows.
With good processing software it could do a good job with billboards, screens, and their ilk.
And it could work even for compensating certain kinds of vision problems (e.g. magnification, focus handling, high-contrast version of the world…).
Money. Someone is profiting.
Still a puzzler, however. I try very hard to not touch anything during subway excursions.
I worked for a company that set up similar sorts of touchscreens, and I was up close with a lot of them. I will never touch a public touchscreen. Ever. shudders
My understanding is that these signs are primarily supposed to replace static maps, not the arrival time signs. Also, there are many stations that don’t have arrival time signs because the lines that service those stations aren’t outfitted with the sensors that drive data to those signs.
With that said, yeah, I would NEVER touch a screen in a NYC subway station, nor anything else for that matter.
