The Missing Link

Many moons ago, soon after finishing engineering school, I took a trip to Europe. One stop on the 3-month journey was Paris, with its elegantly laid out streets artfully touched with oh-so-much dog poo. While waiting in line for tickets to the subway I had a moment that sticks in my mind. When things get frustrating, it’s one of those memories that reassure me I’m in the right line of work.

In front of me in the line up for Metro tickets was a Japanese man. He was trying to buy a ticket but running into some difficulty. The tickets were being sold by a Metro attendant in a glass booth, not an automated machine. He kept trying to give the attendant some money, but for some reason the attendant wouldn’t take it, pushing it back to the man. The man didn’t speak French, the attendant clearly didn’t speak Japanese, and neither seemed to speak English. Growing up in Canada, I should have learned more French, but my only practice was reading the back of cereal boxes while eating breakfast. And although I couldn’t speak Japanese either, I could see that both the man and the attendant were getting frustrated.

Then I noticed a couple things. The attendant kept shaking her head, pointing to the window of the booth here the fares were listed. Was the man not using French money? Nope, he was using Francs (this was before the Euro). But another thing was that the man kept trying to pass two separate bills to the lady, one after or beside the other, rather than one handful of cash. After that it occurred to me what to do. I tapped the man on the shoulder, wrote something on my hand, and showed it to him. He nodded, paid the attendant easily, and got his tickets.

What was it I wrote? I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it was essentially something like:

,=.

5,10 ≠ 5+10

5,10 = 5.10

In French, a comma represents the decimal, and vice versa.  Not knowing this, instead of the 5.10 Franc fare, written as “5,10″, the man kept insisting he pay 15 Francs, thinking his money was being refused. The attendant wasn’t aware of what the man was seeing (or at least how to explain it), so she kept trying to return the extra bills to help him out, leading to a vicious cycle. Each of them had the best intentions in getting the transaction completed, and understood most of what was required. But since they didn’t have a common context, this seemingly little thing got in the way.

It just took someone to help connect the two, even it it was just someone who knew enough “cereal box French”, and “Japanese decimals”.

I think there are some parallels here to doing work in User Experience. As practitioners, we can’t know everything about a client’s business or their customers, but we do help make the connections between them better. Each may think they’re on the right track and doing all they can to help the other out, but until they are talking the same language, they won’t be able to get to where they want to go.