I was recently shopping for a new wallet and discovered that most of them are poorly designed for today’s lifestyle. A quick internet search shows that wallets today are pretty much the same as they were 100 years ago, even though our lifestyles have changed dramatically over the last century. In this short study, I focus on men’s wallets and the experience of swiping a transit card, an event that is part of the daily routine of millions of city-dwellers. My observations reveal that this seemingly simple process often does not work smoothly.

Of the riders that I observed in the New York City subway, I noticed more than half of them had some sort of delay due to the swiping process on their way through the turnstile. Among the many riders who stored their transit cards in wallets, the process of swiping requires at least seven steps. The seven steps are sometimes performed smoothly, but often the rider fumbles somewhere along the way.

Here is a simple storyboard of the process (click for a larger view):

The primary inefficiencies that I observed are:

• Most riders paused somewhere in the process
  • Often the pauses are a result of needing to fully open the wallet to retrieve the card or a disruption caused by something that the rider is carrying.
• Most riders needed both hands to complete the process.
  • This is especially burdensome on riders who are carrying things. These riders have to find a way to free both hands. Most frequently they awkwardly grab their items with a few fingers during the swiping process, put them under their arms, or place them on the ground just before entering the turnstile. Here you can see some of the difficulties in action:



Some cities (like London and DC) have “touchless” systems in place and most will probably have them eventually, but the reality is that millions of people still have to deal with swiping a card. In the next couple of posts, I’ll talk about the implications of these inefficiencies and offer a couple of potential solutions for new wallet designs. Stay tuned.

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