Comments on: Thoughts on ITSO part 1: Smartcard Ticket Usability http://www.masabi.com/2009/10/06/thoughts-on-itso-part-1-smartcard-ticket-usability/ The ticket machine in your pocket Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:11:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Ben Whitaker http://www.masabi.com/2009/10/06/thoughts-on-itso-part-1-smartcard-ticket-usability/comment-page-1/#comment-71 Ben Whitaker Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:59:06 +0000 http://masabi.com/2009/10/thoughts-on-itso-part-1-smartcard-ticket-usability.html#comment-71 A side issue with the idea of purchasing your ticket on the internet and then "automatically" collecting your entitlement as you pass through a gate is that some operators that I've spoken to are not keen to allow gates to perform this function because of the danger of slowing people down in the gate.<br /><br />This is because retrieving the tickets from a central system to place onto the smart-card is an on-line action, which takes extra time, or would fail if the system was off-line.<br /><br />(Checking tickets as they pass through the gate can be done off-line, therefore quickly.)<br /><br />This means that people that have purchased on-line would have to go to a smartcard pick-up touch point first, away from the gates, then go to the gates.<br /><br />If you were using barcodes instead, you could have simply printed out your ticket, or had it delivered to your phone already. A side issue with the idea of purchasing your ticket on the internet and then "automatically" collecting your entitlement as you pass through a gate is that some operators that I've spoken to are not keen to allow gates to perform this function because of the danger of slowing people down in the gate.

This is because retrieving the tickets from a central system to place onto the smart-card is an on-line action, which takes extra time, or would fail if the system was off-line.

(Checking tickets as they pass through the gate can be done off-line, therefore quickly.)

This means that people that have purchased on-line would have to go to a smartcard pick-up touch point first, away from the gates, then go to the gates.

If you were using barcodes instead, you could have simply printed out your ticket, or had it delivered to your phone already.

]]>