Week 3 Tutorial: Queue Behind You

Timed fieldwork at a ticket machine — noticing the exact moment urgency changes a decision

8 March 2027

Before the tutorial

Find a train, bus or parking ticket machine somewhere you’d normally use one anyway — this is fieldwork, not a special trip.

In the tutorial

Bring your timed transaction and the moment urgency changed your decision. We build a shared vocabulary for the design elements that manufacture time pressure: countdowns, beep cadence, sightlines to a queue that may or may not be there.

Afterwards

Hold onto the moment you identified — Assignment 1 asks you to describe a comparable moment for your own chosen machine in more depth.

Who benefits when the design is bad?

The spec

What you bring to the tutorial. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

  • you time your own transaction at a real ticket machine, start to finish
  • you note the first moment you felt rushed, and what caused it
  • you can distinguish a queue that existed from a queue you only imagined

Teaching team