‘[Virgin trains] denied reports in the Daily Telegraph about automatic doors opening unexpectedly or locking people in.
Problems with disabled toilets on the hi-tech tilting trains however were down to people not using the automatic doors properly, a spokesman said.
“There’s a button to close the door and another with a key symbol on it which locks the door and flashes when the door closes,” said David Ewart, communications manager with Virgin.
“It’s pretty clear what you have to do. We’ve even got signs in Braille,” he added.
Rail watchdog group Passenger Focus, however, said there might be a need for Virgin to have clearer instructions for customers.’
What a mad world we live in where people design electronic toilet door buttons… and get it wrong! And some poor soul ends up getting caught with their trousers down on the 9:13 from Birmingham New Street. Surely a manual door would have been ok. Then a nice handle which affords sliding would have been crystal clear.
But now we’ve got watchdog groups to make sure that the toilet doors get improved. And reporters to write stories about the whole business. And bloggers to blog about it. And Virgin has to refit the doors, and create improved signage.
Think how much time and money could have been saved if the engineer had just designed the door right, and usability tested it in the first place. Then the whole lot of us could go off and do something more meaningful. (There is a lesson here about hasty roll-outs of interactive products and the true time and cost of reaching customer satisfaction. But I’m not going to spell it out any further).
PS. If anyone ‘goes’ on a pendolino, do try and get to the ‘bottom’ of this one for me.