Trains

I've been on a fair share of rail journeys lately. Trips for work and leisure have taken me from Edinburgh to London, Hull to Liverpool. And I love it.

I've tried several rail companies, and have been advised on which to book and which to avoid. Some definitely have more comfortable seats, or an easier ticketing system, or clearer indication of which carriage you're in.

But these haven't made a massive difference on each journey. Only two things have had any real effect on my experience: who I'm sitting with, and how good the view is.

I've been on trips with screaming children, and people who won't sit still, and seat-mates who encroach on your space. I've been on others with people who provided nice conversation, or a comfortable silence.

Likewise some views are spectacular: Travelling north from Leeds means passing through fields of sheep, coastlines with cragged rock faces, and fairy tale-esque castles and estates. Other trips pass through nothing more exciting than a construction zone.

That's not to say that the UX of the booking process or the inside of the train doesn't matter. Of course it does; I work in UX and know the value of improving those little interactions. But real-world variables are often more tangible--literally--than anything we design online. There's only so much control you can have over a user's experience once they look up from the screen or out the window.

All that to say that we have to consider the real world as a condition of any experience. Users aren't avatars that spring to life when they open your site; they're people who interact with, and are interacted with, everything around them. Remembering this brings to light their humanity, which goes a long way in focusing the design on all the small ways that an experience can be improved.