Interaction Satisfaction

Posted on August 19, 2008 at 5:55 pm by Kate Kusiak

This is the first in a series of observations, questions, interviews, opinions and answers about the human experience of using transit.

I grew up in the suburbs and couldn’t articulate why I disliked it. Then, in the middle of high school, I moved ‘downtown’ and couldn’t quite articulate why I loved it.

It’s having different destinations to visit. It’s getting around to different places. Transit is cheap and easy and I felt I had achieved a level of teenage urban independence.

After university, transit turned into an item of necessity. I was a commuter. Waiting for 2 minutes or 25 minutes – waiting was exhausting. Was it worse to have already paid subway fare and hear that there was a delay or emergency, or to calculate how many full trains I would let pass before I would squeeze into one and squeamishly smile at the unhappy commuters whose personal space I was invading.

There are positive transit experiences.

The best part of transit is the unexpected yet enjoyable conversation with a stranger. Maybe because those times stand out in stark contrast to the mostly quiet daily commutes. Some of my favourite topics of conversation had to do with the quirky phenomenon of transit riders who resist moving all the way to the end of the streetcar. I admit there have been a few times while attempting to board a streetcar, I loudly but politely asking passengers to move down, which was generally effective.

Another conversation began with an observation of the lack of interaction between people sitting beside each other for 20 minutes. What would change this? I shared a bit of what I had learned from studying urban planning. William Whyte suggested that there needs to be something of interest in order to spark conversation between two people (Chapter 11, Triangulation in “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”). But not everyone wants to engage in conversation. How can we figure out if the person we are sitting next to wouldn’t mind a casual chat?

Stay tuned as I explore these questions.

Tags: , , ,

6 Comments

  1. The first, and easy way, to figure out if the person next to you is up for a chat is if they don’t have white earbuds stuck in their ears. As much as I love my iPod, I’ve noticed that I’ve been talking to strangers much less on the subway now that mp3 players are ubiquitous.

    I also think that having some kind of art (instead of ads?) on the subway would be a good conversation starter. Art is one of those topics where everyone has an opinion, often diverging.

    GravatarComment by Sameer Vasta — August 20, 2008 @ 8:52 am

  2. Striking up a conversation on transit is mostly a function of individual personality; it is somewhat difficult to predict. I’ve been using transit regularly for many years, and a number of the conversations I’ve struck up have grown from a simple comment on something I have in common with the other person. Sometimes, they’re wearing my school jacket. Sometimes we both see a silly event (like a GO bus driver arguing with a man trying to get on with a phony ticket). Other times, I just happen to overhear a conversation and can’t resist making a comment.

    My point, however, is that these are things that get me talking; it will be different with everyone else. Some people are probably not as talkative as I am!

    Making these connections more common I see would involve, perhaps, increasing the number of things to talk about. Maybe we need to find a way to make Toronto more spontaneous…!

    GravatarComment by Peter Kucirek — August 20, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

  3. I love the idea of making the journey a destination, a genuine human experience, rather than merely a function.

    Art on transit is key to humanizing these spaces as part of an inclusive public realm. The ideas of Newmindspace’s subway parties need to break out of the perceived novelty of white raver kids and into mainstream interventions that can engage the commuting business-man and the busy working mom. iPods can be tools for a shared experience as well, where two people choose to plug into each other’s music for a while.

    The Metronauts community can bring these kinds of guerilla interventions into the mainstream, and I encourage members of the community to take the initiative. Share your ideas here!

    GravatarComment by Mark Kuznicki — August 20, 2008 @ 1:27 pm

  4. Ironically enough I’ve found that more often than not one thing does get people talking on the TTC and that is a system delay. Be it a medical emergency, a power outage, or a mechanical problem somewhere on the line, there is usually no shortage of conversation as people inevitably start chatting amongst themselves during times of forced confinement. Strangers will speculate as to whether the “passenger assistance” alarm means that someone has fallen or jumped onto the tracks and of course the goriest theories tend to be the most popular. Another conversation starter is what the TTC announcer is actually saying. Rarely can one make out what is being said over the speaker system which only fuels commuter frustration and wilder speculation. Being trapped together in a steel rocket in a darkened subway tunnel often draws people together as they wonder aloud whether they will make their morning meeting or be on time for their exam or whatever. The bottom line is that commuters do interact quite regularly with each other on the TTC even if only during the myriad “system delays” that occur on a daily (some say hourly) basis. So yay for transit delays (bet you never thought you’d hear someone say that)! They are the glue that bind commuters together!

    GravatarComment by Samantha Dukhu — August 20, 2008 @ 4:54 pm

  5. Samantha, you bring up a good point about speaker system announcements. With the automated stop announcements now in place, it’s a lot harder to infuse character and originality into the messages coming across the system.

    I wrote a post about “transit chatter” on my personal blog a few months ago talking about how original and genuine system messaging makes riding transit a more personal experience.

    People are very likely to connect if they share an experience that’s a little out of the ordinary: a personal and humorous system message or stop announcement can do just that.

    GravatarComment by Sameer Vasta — August 21, 2008 @ 9:55 am

  6. It’s really interesting – how easy conversation is when the TTC is breaking down one way or another. Everyone has an opinion about the TTC and its problems – is there a shift into having a positive conversation?

    One day around 5, an announcer read a few station names with an echo, which made everyone on my train chuckle — now there’s spontenaity hosted by TTC!

    I think the PA system was a great tool to cheaply and freely communicate that *could have added character. I imagine that creative use of the PA system by an employee would be against ‘the rules’.

    Could this rule could be broken a few hours a week? Invite radio personalities or comedians to enage or entertain people waiting on the platforms..

    GravatarComment by Kate Kusiak — August 22, 2008 @ 5:18 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

"));