Belgian rail and usability

After the bus company, De lijn, introduced the sms-ticket I never use other way to buy tickets for a bus ride. Now the Belgian rail introduced a sms-ticket and I wanted to see if it is going to be the way to buy train tickets from now on.

I suspected it to be a little more difficult because of the price range between short and long rides but the experience was much harder than expected.

First attempt

There are two ways to buy a ticket, an iphone app and the mobile website. Why is there only an iphone app? As a developer I know there are tools to create apps for the different smartphone operating systems form a single code base. And Belgian rail has an official app for android, so why not update that app for sms-tickets?

Some bright minds probably already started thinking, why do they call it an sms-ticket if you need an internet connection. The ticket is send to your phone in an sms.

So I go to the mobile site and before you can buy a ticket you need to have an account.  If you want to buy a ticket on the regular website you need to provide you name and address, so I guess creating an account is their solution to make the buying easier because it is a one time deal.

I'm filling in the form. After I click on the what I think is the last step to complete the account I get an error message.

For a spur of the moment buyer this is enough reason never to buy an sms-ticket.

The long way

Because I'm crazy or addicted to technology or both I really want to know how to buy an sms-ticket. So I go to the Belgian rail website on my computer and create an account.

The first thing that strikes me as a webdeveloper is that the form to create an account is in a popup. What other things do you want to do other than creating an account at that time?
For your date of birth they use the JQuery UI datepicker with default settings which makes it impossible to select your date faster than you can type. There is a demo on the JQuery UI site which makes it a better datepicker.

After I completed the form I get a message to confirm the account. I guess you also need to do this on the mobile site so if you are on a smartphone you need to switch between apps, which is another threshold before buying a ticket.

Back to the mobile site now. I log in and go through the ticket data selection. When I come to the payment part there are only creditcard options. This is strange because on the regular website you have more options.
After selecting a creditcard option there is a checkbox to remember Belgian rail as seller to make the payments easier. It seems that the service Belgian rail uses to handle the payments only provides this option for creditcards?

 Conclusion

After creating an account and having a creditcard and remebering Belgian rail as a seller, the only one that makes it hard to buy an sms-ticket is the bank you are with. Some banks make you to verify the online creditcard purchase so you need to have your digipass with you and also your creditcard.

SMS is a quick platform for on the road and buying and sms-ticket isn't, there are too much actions needed  and less options than on the regular website. 

Aftermath analysis (how I would create the sms-ticket) 

After looking at all the data they need and all the ticket options they have it looks like the sms ticket is a six step process.

1. Personal data and data about the ride 
2. ride options provided by Belgian rail
3. ride option selection sms
4. payment info by Belgian rail
5. payment sms
6. sms-ticket by Belgian rail

So it takes three sms messages without the need of an internet connection.

Personal data and data about the ride

They use parts of the account information, date of birth gets mentioned in their faq, to secure the sms ticket.

Why not make the personal information that they need required lines in the sms.

The ride data they need is begin and end station, go date and return date is optional.

An example sms could be:

1. START
2. first name
3. last name
4. date of birth
5. begin station
6. end station
7. go date

The first line is to make the sms service aware this is a new ticket. 

Ride options provided by Belgian rail

SMS is a peer to peer platform so there are no sessions and because it is a multistep process a token should be send to add to the following sms messages. The token should be as short as possible to make it easy to remember but big enough to allow all the travelers to create a ticket for a two day period. The two day period is in case the traveler starts making a ticket close to midnight.

The options should have numbers to identify them.

An example sms:

1. abc123
2. 1 adult : 2.5 €
3. 2 child : 2 €

Ride option selection sms

The ticket buyer now needs to  verify which options he needs.

Example sms:

1. OPTIONS abc123
2. 1 1

Payment info by Belgian rail

Provide a code that the buyer can send to reduce his telecom account by the amount of the ticket and send the sms ticket to the buyer.

This is what the bus company does with the two options they provide.

Conclusion

It can be a bumpy ride especially the first sms because it needs a lot of information that has to verified. But it is a pure sms solution which makes the public who can use the sms ticket bigger.