The perils of bad design

Yesterday I got a firsthand lesson in how detrimental bad graphic design can be. Not just to my eyeballs, but to the practical aspects of day-to-day living.

I got off the train in Ottawa and went over to the OC Transpo bus platform where the bus was supposed to come and pick me up and take me downtown. Instead, the bus drove right by me. I thought maybe he hadn’t seen me because I was waiting inside the bus shelter. So I waited for the next one. It drove right by without stopping. Frustrated, I tried to figure out if there was another bus I could take. Then another woman came along and waved at the bus she wanted when it came flying around the corner of the transitway. Ahhhh. So that’s what the hideous sign was trying to tell me. I couldn’t take a picture, but I will try and describe it to you.

Basically, the sign had all the bus routes that stopped at that stop in big block letters. Some of them had stripes through them, but no legend telling me what that meant. In the bottom left corner was the word “Peak” over a line with a French translation underneath. In the bottom right corner was the word “Westbound” over a line with the French translation underneath. Both were the same size and in the same font. In the middle at the bottom was a red “stop” hand that said “Request Stop.”

Apparently, from all of this, I was supposed to gather that if I wanted the bus to stop, I was supposed to wave frantically at it since it was during peak hours (although there was no explanation anywhere of what the peak hours are). What? Maybe I’m slow, but that sign did not tell me that at ALL. How was I to know that the stripey letters corresponded with the word “Peak”? Or what peak hours are? Or that I was supposed to wave at the bus during said peak hours?

Stupid.