Masabi » tickets

Ticket Sculptures at Waterloo

Will — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:18:31 +0000

Ed spotted these railcard ticket sculptures at Waterloo station today – it’s definitely one advantage over a barcode!

(Other advantage: in-journey origami!)

Masabi Wins a Top Place on UKTI Stand at Barcelona MWC

Will — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:35:57 +0000

Masabi walked away from the recent Mobile Monday competition with one of the top prizes on offer – a place on the UKTI stand at the Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona!

Going head-to-head for one of three coveted places on the stand, 11 companies each made a 3 minute Dragon’s Den-style presentation to impress the judges, followed by a 5 minute Q&A. The time enforcement was rigorous and the standard of competition was extremely high, so high in fact that the judges eventually decided to award four places!

Top honours went to Masabi, for our mobile phone transport ticketing technology; Private Planet, who pitched an impressive cloud computing platform; Deltenna, for their Wifi router that runs off 3G signals; and Input Dynamics, who presented their acoustic user-interface for mid-tier mobile phones.

The stand – which we’re very excited about – will provide Masabi with an unprecedented level of exposure for our mobile ticketing technology, allowing us to showcase it to the international A-list of the mobile world.

Commiserations go to the runners-up, who pitched a wealth of innovative and vibrant ideas, and will surely be ones to watch for the future. They won’t be too disappointed though, as they also won a free pass each to the show. An honourable mention goes to PassivSystems, whose home energy-saving device and mobile app narrowly missed out on a top spot, despite delivering an exemplary presentation and product.

Thanks to everyone that attended, and to UKTI and MoMo for organising the competition!

See you in Barça in February!

Århus Mobile Ticketing Workshop slides

Tom Godber — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Giacomo’s talk a few weeks back at the Mobile Ticketing Workshop in Århus, Denmark went down extremely well, rounding out an interesting discussion on the ins and outs of mTicketing. You can see his slides here:

Mobile Ticketing Workshop 2009

View more presentations from Masabi.

The ability to take payments from the customer and initiate the ticket sale from the mobile was cited as a key feature by a lot of attendees.

Thoughts on ITSO part 1: Smartcard Ticket Usability

Giacomo Biggiero — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:56:00 +0000

On 28th October, the consultation period ends for the Department for Transport’s paper Developing a strategy for smart and integrated ticketing, which is effectively¹ the latest round of defining the ITSO specification.

ITSO was formed to build and maintain a specification for secure ‘end to end’ inter-operable ticketing transactions. Specifically they mean smartcard ticketing, although this doesn’t seem to be a perfect solution. There are three main areas which raise serious questions for me about the ITSO specification as it stands (v 2.1.3), which are Usability, Commercials and Security.

In this post I will focus on the usability issues which arise from smartcard ticketing, which are not ITSO-specific.

Usability

On the surface, smartcard ticketing seems like a brilliant solution for the end user – anyone who has used London’s Oyster Card system will know that catching a bus has never been simpler, or quicker now that you don’t have to join a queue of people fumbling for change. However, transport in greater London is very simple, and so are its pricing structures. For a full UK-wide, multi-mode ticketing system there are bigger problems that need addressing.

Ticket purchase

The first problem that a smartcard ticketing system must face is how a customer gets his ticket onto his smartcard. Suggestions I’ve heard for this:

use a vending machine, and swipe your card at the end to pick up your ticket
buy from a teller, and swipe your card at the end to pick up your ticket
buy from a conductor, and swipe your card at the end to pick up your ticket
buy on the internet, and swipe your card at a ticket machine in your departure station to pick up your ticket

It’s not clear how any of these options is quicker or more convenient than buying a paper ticket.

Journey details

Traditionally, the details of a transport ticket are printed on the ticket itself. This simple system allows the holder to instantly check where there ticket will take them, how much it cost, whether they have a seat reserved and other pertinent details. An e-ticket on a smartcard has no such simple access – a separate electronic device is required to check details of a ticket, or even to check it actually exists. I asked a representative of ATOC how they planned to counter this, and the answer is primarily ‘a piece of paper with the ticket details printed on it’, and in future, NFC phones. For more info on when NFC will realistically be available, read our post on the subject. For now, the public will have to settle for a paper ticket in addition to the smartcard ticket whose aim is to replace paper tickets.

Ticket selection

Often people will own more than one transport ticket at any time. How does the smartcard, or the device reading your smartcard, “clip”^* the correct ticket? How would the customer check that the correct ticket has been clipped? Similarly to journey details, without an easy way for a customer to interpret his smartcard it becomes very difficult to manage.

* Tickets must be validated and marked as used by an inspector, conductor or ticket gate

Queues

One of the biggest complaints that passengers on UK rail make is the length of the queues. As shown above, smartcard ticketing does little to tackle this, and until the advent of NFC-enabled mobile phones, it might be possible that smartcards could increase queuing as concerned travellers ask ticket inspectors to make sure they are travelling on the correct ticket that is saved on their smartcard.

So what problem does ITSO smartcard ticketing actually solve? The only benefit would be to allow better tracking of individual passengers through the system. This would allow better understanding of how our public transport system is used, and therefore offer ways to increase efficiency. This passenger tracking could equally be achieved using barcodes in place of smartcards. Paper barcodes solve issues of ticket selection and viewing journey details. Transferring the same barcodes to mobile allows for simple ticket purchase with immediate delivery, so solving the other usability issues as well.

ITSO will be the standard for smart ticketing in England and the UK, ensuring that the local schemes are interoperable with each other.

Masabi speaking in Seoul next week

Tom Godber — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Ben Whitaker will be speaking alongside Nokia at the Mobile Content Conference & Awards 2009 in Seoul, Korea next week (September 9th-11th). His talk is titled “Mobile Commerce meets the Real World in Ticketing”.

If you’re at the show, or indeed in Seoul at the time, and want to talk mobile ticketing then get in touch and he’ll be happy to meet you!