It’s my impression that while many people do commute by train (and I think the regulars are the ones using the machines), a good deal of train travel is undertaken by people who don’t do it regularly enough to know which ticket to ask for; at that point, consulting a human being is the only option if one isn’t to get it badly wrong.

Just my perspective, anyway

Clearly your experience about at Frankfurt airport is a failure of information design (perhaps surprising as airports are generally held as being the crown jewels of wayfinding work). In fact, any situation like this where someone feels a need to seek human reassurance can be seen as a failure of information design. However, in many cases I’d suggest there’s a failure of belief too. As you said on a tweet ‘we don’t want to misunderstand’. If the likes of me do our job as well as we can, then there should never be any misunderstanding, but we’ll have to go a long way to beat the element of doubt that exists in a person’s mind, an element of doubt that increases exponentially with the importance of their decision – and of course their mental state.

Is this “emotional usability” or what? Psychic usability? Human usability?

I saw something recently about an experiment in a train station where exit signs were removed and a group of stooges (for want of a better word) were placed among the genuine passengers. These stooges then made their way to the exit, and lo and behold, the majority of genuine passengers chose to follow them, assuming they knew the way. Coupled with the experiences you’ve described it does become clear that we’d still rather trust another human who seems confident in what they’re telling us.

Perhaps it’s the confidence in the way an answer is given that inspires belief in the answer itself, and this is where written information falls down. If it fills the reader with even the slightest doubt, it is immediately less successful than getting the same information from another person.

When I researched nursing homes for my late mother, I did so long distance. I couldn’t stand the text-filled pages (mostly blather, too). I wanted a human being to pop out of my browser, hold my hand, and say, there, there, we’ll take good care of your mum. Of course, that didn’t happen on the Web. However, it did shine through on the phone calls I made.

This all proves my point – that we should have a Masters or PhD in psychology and ethnography and anthropology – in addition to language and writing degrees – to do any proper communication work.