New subway cars were recently put in service in New York city. I had
my first ride with one of them today, on the 6 line from Astor Place
to 59th st. And I don’t like them. It’s not that I generally hate the
MTA. In fact, I love New
York’s subways. It’s just that I use them every day, so when the
MTA does something stupid, I feel compelled to comment on it.
The new cars have many usability problems: The light’s terrible, the
materials used are sterile and unfriendly to humans, the colors are
ugly. But those problems are not what urged me to write.
What did urge me to write is the recorded voice. The new subway cars
have a recorded voice that announces the stations, as well as
the all too familiar "Stand clear of the closing doors". The
usability of the recorded voices is, at one level, clearly superior to
that of the live train operator, which, as you’ll know if you’ve ever
taken the subway in New York city, are pretty much inaudible. But why
does the recordings have to sound that unnatural?
Something magical seems to happen inside people’s head when their
voices are recorded for these purposes. A complete transformation
takes place. People start to talk funny. They exaggerate
the pronunciation to the extreme.
Think about it for a second. Somewhere at the MTA headquarters, sits
the person responsible for overseeing the recordings of these
announcements. Let’s say his name is Chris. Chris is a person, a real
human being. And Chris has actually, consciously decided that this
was the way the recorded voices for his subway cars should
sound. Was Chris not thinking? What ears was he using when he
heard these dreadful recordings?
Alan Cooper has
trick for intuitively assessing the usability of software systems:
Pretend the software is a human being. How would we react to a
human that acted the way the software does? Very often, we’d be
outraged. I’d like to apply the same technique here.
If I was a journalist, I’d find Chris, and ask him out for an
interview over lunch. And from the moment we met, and through the
whole conversation, I’d speak to him using the same voice as
these recordings, the same inhuman pronunciation. I bet, by the end of
the meal, he’d have gone crazy. In fact, I think Chris would walk out
on me way before the lunch was even over.
Thank you, Chris, for forcing us to listen to this every day!
{ 4 comments }
soothing conductress
Agreed — the recording does sound like a robot. Part of the problem may be that some sentences are pasted together from what must be pre-recorded words or phrases. But yeah, it’s pretty lame.
I’ll never forget the time I was riding the F uptown on the morning of September 13, 2001. The train was of course full of scared, unhappy commuters putting on their bravest faces and going back to work. As we approached my stop, the conductor, an African-American woman with a very soothing voice (a lot like the DJ in the movie The Warriors if anyone’s seen that) announced the stop and then said "Remember… take care of each other out there". I was almost completely overcome, and I think a lot of the other passengers were too.
Who cares at least you can hear them and understand them.
I don’t care if they sound like robots or not they are easy to hear and understand unlike the human voices they currently use. The recorded voices I’ve heard on other systems around the world are similar and I think quite frankly they work.
I don’t really think they sound like robots at all but they do sound like recordings of human voices. They are not live and they are probably pieced together digitally.
I love them that way!
Hi, I’m12 years old.I’ve lived in NY all my life. I love the recordings. I find themvery amusing. And since my hobby is memerizing subway stops, the fake voices make it easier to memerize the recording. This is a brooklyn bridge bound, 6 train.The next stop is 68th st,hunter college!
I love them too!
When am on the number two train heading to school I like to memorize the stops along the way "This stop is 96 street Transfer is available to the 1 and 9 Trains"
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