Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
So, I've had my first go on these, and my (not so) quick conclusion was that they are absolutely awful - considerably worse than the already-poor Northern/Chiltern ones.
One advantage is the smaller screen - I find the big screen ones difficult to use up close because of the relatively low screen resolution and the need to "hunt" around the large screen to find stuff. There also seem to be two versions of the hardware (both are present at Carlisle), one of them having a cut-out above the card machine so tall people can still see the screen, the other not having this so we can't. Hopefully the former is the standard.
However, that advantage aside, the UI is utterly terrible, and even as an expert TVM user I didn't feel confident about what I was doing, and all I was doing was buying an Any Permitted CDR from Penrith to Carlisle (also ending up with a pointless reservation for an Avanti train I had no intention of using due to the silly pseudocompulsory reservation policy). The most stupid thing is that the times are 12-hour clock - who on earth uses that in a railway context in 2022? But overall, the whole thing was a confusing and slow experience. Almost seems designed to make you use their app instead (which isn't too bad).
Can Avanti get anything right? But more importantly, why can seemingly nobody* design a planner based TVM that is in the slightest bit intuitive, given that (a) it's basically just a big phone (a bit like using one of the phone apps on a 12" iPad Pro zoomed in, basically), and (b) I don't find any of the mobile apps particularly bad to use?
* Possibly LNER, I've not used one recently.
One advantage is the smaller screen - I find the big screen ones difficult to use up close because of the relatively low screen resolution and the need to "hunt" around the large screen to find stuff. There also seem to be two versions of the hardware (both are present at Carlisle), one of them having a cut-out above the card machine so tall people can still see the screen, the other not having this so we can't. Hopefully the former is the standard.
However, that advantage aside, the UI is utterly terrible, and even as an expert TVM user I didn't feel confident about what I was doing, and all I was doing was buying an Any Permitted CDR from Penrith to Carlisle (also ending up with a pointless reservation for an Avanti train I had no intention of using due to the silly pseudocompulsory reservation policy). The most stupid thing is that the times are 12-hour clock - who on earth uses that in a railway context in 2022? But overall, the whole thing was a confusing and slow experience. Almost seems designed to make you use their app instead (which isn't too bad).
Can Avanti get anything right? But more importantly, why can seemingly nobody* design a planner based TVM that is in the slightest bit intuitive, given that (a) it's basically just a big phone (a bit like using one of the phone apps on a 12" iPad Pro zoomed in, basically), and (b) I don't find any of the mobile apps particularly bad to use?
* Possibly LNER, I've not used one recently.
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