For those of you that are business-oriented, large organizations tend to have “soft openings”, basically testing a product for a bit, before an official press release and celebration occurs. Well, the other day, I discovered TransLink’s soft open for it’s latest e-product, MyTrip Next Bus. MyTrip Next Bus is their attempt at an SMS (text message) system to receive next bus information. Thanks to the installation of unique five digit numbers at all bus stops in the past little while, they’ve been able to provide the automated call centre, Google Transit, and now MyTrip Next Bus.

The service is quite straightforward. Instead on phoning in that stop number and charging up time on your cell bill, you just text that number to 33333. A couple minutes later, it sends you the next few bus times.

This may sound all cool to you, and it is, but it’s not very new. See, a few university students developed an SMS system over a year ago for our transit system. They refined it and even turned it into a business. So bus schedules via SMS have been around for a while. Frankly, it’s just plain sad that it takes some innovative transit users creating a cool product until TransLink even knows such technologies exist. What’s worse, is now, almost a year later, TransLink’s own product is worse than the students’!

Here’s TransLink’s Next Bus text message to my cell:

So, at the top it tells me the stop number. Beside the stop number it says 12:05, but it’s not very clear what that time is for. Unlike the rest of the page, that time is not beside a route number, and it certainly isn’t the current time (the phone’s clock on the right says 11:53). Next, it doesn’t seem like they used very good formatting for the SMS – there’s a whole whack of symbols available for use, and the best they can do is commas (heck, there’s not even a space between the route number and scheduled time). And then they use 42 characters for that message at the bottom of the message, which really is not needed, and when each message can only have 150 characters, they sure do waste a lot of space for that added text. Personally, I don’t find it at all user friendly, and as you’ll see below, compared to the HandiMobility version (powered by QuickMobile), it’s quite disappointing.

Here’s HandiMobility’s text message to my cell:

What can I say? It’s user friendly, with an easy distinction between routes numbers and schedule times, between AM and PM, and doesn’t waste much space at the bottom with any useless text. I also like the use of the “//” to separate the schedule times from the URL.

What’s more, HandiMobility has already developed a personalization service through FaceBook. Basically, you can then bookmark stops with whatever name you want to give them, then you text that new name to their number to get schedule times. With this system, I don’t have to know the five digit number, and can easily save stops I regularly use. For example, the bus near my house in Surrey, I bookmarked with “320 CLO”, because it’s the stop where the westbound 320 leaves. When I’m in Vancouver and want to know when the next 320 leaves eastbound for Cloverdale, I text “320 SRY”. Or, when I’m headed downtown and want to know if a bus is coming shortly, or whether I should just walk, I text “006 RICH”.

The personalized text is slightly different, and I’ve attached it below. It includes the name of the stop, with a slightly longer service message at the end.

I don’t know what’s wrong with TransLink. Why can’t they develop *good* electronic products? Even this new service, Next Bus, it’s not that hard to do. You just need the simple skill of looking at something and deciphering whether it’s user friendly to the public. Maybe some people don’t know how to balance information and simplicity. All it will take to improve this is a change of the textual format in the SMS system. Let’s hope they fix it before the press release goes out.

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A comparison of TransLink’s and HandiMobility’s actual message:

55210 12:05p 320,12:20p 320,12:35p 320,12:50p 320,01:50p 320,01:20p 320, Send HELP for info. A Service of TransLink

[320] 09:27P 10:24P 11:24P [341] 05:46A 06:16A 06:46A [340] 06:05A 06:34A 07:04A // www.textbus.ca

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Symbols available for usage:

. @ ? ! – , & : ‘ ” + = / $ * % ; | < > { } [ ] _ ( ) ~ ^ |

Also, incorporating some SMS lingo would help TransLink seem more human and technically inclined: ^^ thx :)

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Suggested new versions for TransLink:

#55210 [320] 12:05p 12:20p [341] 12:35p 12:50p || TransLink :)

@55210 /320/ 12:05p 12:20p /341/ 12:35p 12:50p // TransLink // thx :)

(55210) -320- 12:05p 12:20p -341- 12:35p 12:50p (TransLink)