Kevin and I keep commenting on how we live in the dark ages in Chicago, as we are walking around Shanghai. There are little customer innovations everywhere, reducing the friction of daily travel, eating, and the rest.
This picture is a great example of the Shanghai transportation authority thinking empathically about this map in context of a morning commute– It is placed on the ceiling of the subway, so passengers that are sitting down or are slightly shorter can still see the stop that they are at, and the stop that they need to go to.
Total incremental cost to put a map on the ceiling? Little to none.
Total incremental user happiness? Potentially immeasurable.
::sigh:: Maybe someday, the El won’t have 27 year old subway cars, be clean, quiet, and fast like the subway here in Shanghai. Hopefully it’s in my lifetime, and before the price of travel is $7 per ride.
I don’t mind if Mayor Richard Daley’s name needs to be plastered over every single inch of every subway car for it to happen… but it’s badly overdue.
Some other cities in China have that beat… the stops have LED’s in them and it tells you where exactly you are… which station you’re at and there are 5 LED’s between stations so you know how far the next station is. It’s AWESOME, and relatively simple.
I mean… the MAPS have LED’s telling where you are