Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

With the recent uproar over the CTA and their sign mistakes, I have been paying more attention to the overall CTA and their signage and announcements. I’m not sure how many people have noticed the discrepancies between what the CTA prints on their maps within ‘L’ trains, the signs at the stations, and the announcements made on the train itself. Here are a few of the examples I have seen:

‘L’ Map (Brown Line): Mart
Verbal: Merchandise Mart
Signage: Merchandise Mart
Reason for discrepancy: I think this is just because of the graphic space the designer had to work with. However, this does not excuse this. All three should match as it is the best in terms of recognition for both English and non-English speakers. If I am visiting the city and someone tells me, “Get off at Merchandise Mart” I can probably assume they mean, “Mart”, but how do I know?

‘L’ Map (Brown Line): Chicago
Verbal: Chicago and Franklin
Signage: Chicago
Reason for discrepancy: The signage came first, so everything else should follow what the signage says. The ‘L’ map matches, but why did they change the announcements to be “Chicago and Franklin”?

‘L’ Map (Red Line): Chicago
Verbal: Chicago and State
Signage: Chicago
Reason for discrepancy: The same problem as above. Why do they have so many different signs and announcements?

Bottom Line: Somebody at the CTA needs to get the sign guy, the map guy, and the announcer all in the same room and have them come up with a single plan. This is the most basic of usability tenets. As a designer or usability professional, you should always try and be consistent, even if it’s consistently bad or consistently good, at least your users will quickly figure out how to react to your interface and it will hopefully become a seamless and thoughtless process.

Pictures from Gapers Block and DancingDavidE