A bugbear of mine for the last few months had been the recently redesigned Dublin Bus website.
The main problem I have with the site is their search.
Timetable Search
It’s a pretty safe bet to think that most of the site users will be looking for timetables. The site allows you to search by place name or route number. Say, for instance, I was looking of the 46a timetable. Once I begin typing, a drop down appears to help me with me choice, so far so good.
Eventually (yes the site is a tad bit slow!) a search results page loads and displays one result. Well of course it does, there is only 1 timetable for the 46a. Wouldn’t it be quicker to bring the user directly to the timetable page, considering there is only one result? Alternatively, they could provide a list of related routes that go in the same direction.
Can’t spell? Dublin bus won’t help you
If you search by place name (ignoring the drop down) and misspell that place name:
This is what you’ll get:
Thanks Dublin bus, that’s helpful. No spell check, no ‘Did you mean…’ feature, just two search boxes — and without any indication that there’s been an error. The site search doesn’t do spell check either.
Three: the magic number?
There is total of three search boxes on the homepage:
- Site search
- Place name search
- Route number search
That a whole lot search boxes for one page. Wouldn’t one search box fit them all? Or they could integrate the place name and route number search boxes together and leave the site search as it.
The positives (sort of)
Dublin bus provides a list of bus routes by destination, like, ‘colleges hospitals’ for example. They definitely get brownie points for remembering that not all of their users will know where their destination is exactly. But the list of of destinations is both a scrolling and paginated list, which is confusing. Wouldn’t one or the other do?
Prioritise by user
This is a fairly new website so maybe they just haven’t ironed out all the problems yet. But for a site like this, where search for timetables is probably a primary use case, shouldn’t the correct implementation of search be first on their list? What do you think?
August 24, 2009 at 6:52 pm
That’s one of my peeves too.
But worse than that, for me at least, is that the times in the timetables used to run top-to-bottom first, then left-to-right. And now they run left-to-right first, then top-to-bottom. (But with no use of row/column shading to clarify).
Many’s the time this has caused me think there’s no bus for an hour, only to go back later and discover there was one every 15 minutes.
August 26, 2009 at 10:03 am
The search by place name doesn’t work properly either. If you want to go somewhere that isn’t on the lists of their designated bus stops, your search results returns no buses. Which is rather irritating if you don’t know the exact spelling or phrase used to describe the stop.
August 26, 2009 at 10:07 am
Nice point about all the search boxes Rosarie.
My secondary school Irish didn’t cover Dublin Bus route stages so I’m miffed as to why they insist on displaying them at the top of each timetable. Sure, they’re in English at the bottom of the page but do the majority of Gaelgoirs using the site even grasp these placenames easily?
I’m all for promoting the Irish language but there’s a time and a place and it ain’t the 46a to Teampaill Charraig an tSionnaigh!
August 26, 2009 at 10:21 am
I suppose one of the most obvious missing things is something we’ve put up with for so long that we probably don’t notice it’s missing any more: a map for each route showing where the bus goes, and where the bus stops are. Street/stage names are no use unless you’re quite familiar with where you’re going.
August 26, 2009 at 10:54 pm
http://www.nextbus.ie is a much better new site for loooking up bus timetables.
August 27, 2009 at 10:32 am
I wouldn’t say nextbus.ie is “much better” — it’s slightly more efficient for just checking what time the next bus is supposed to leave its point of origin, but not much else.
Since that’s not where most people get on the bus, that makes it even less useful than dublinbus.ie, which at least that tells you roughly how long the bus should take to get to your stop once it’s left. (Assuming you know where the places it’s talking about actually are, which I often don’t on an unfamiliar route– which is why we need those maps!)
August 29, 2009 at 4:12 pm
If you know when and how often the bus leaves the origin it’s a simple matter to figure out approximately how long you’ll be waiting for the bus. For example if it leaves every 30 minutes at the time of day that you want then a bus will reach your bus stop on average every 30 minutes (changes in traffic will skew individual buses but it should more or less average out when the change reverses). I find those guideline times between stops to be unreliable anyway (except when most of the route is buslane) .
August 29, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Oh and I of course agree that we need a route map. I read a notice on a busstop saying that they are developing a new map but I don’t know if it’s what we’re thinking of, hopefully it is.
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August 31, 2009 at 10:07 pm
The website’s biggest drawback is the lack of maps. I can find routes and timetables reasonably ok, but I’ve been in Dublin a while. Tourists aren’t going to be as good with placenames etc.
I’m a bit unsure of how the total number of Dublin Bus routes but surely it wouldn’t take that long to put a few markers down on Google Maps or an equivalent.
September 9, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I went to Dublin Bus in O’Connell Street and asked for a map, I was asked where did I want to go. I said just to see the routes on the street would be good. All I got was a sheet with the bus stops in city centre.
This looks interesting, maybe could be improved upon with collaboration.
http://mkmap.com/dublin
I came across it in http://www.pelastop.de/2008/05/03/dublinbus_map/
September 10, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Wow, that’s amazing. Makes examining what the route is much much easier.
September 14, 2009 at 12:54 pm
If you liked that try http://justroutes.com/
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