25/Feb/2011 Navigo Card

Today I want to talk about card, purely the design of the card itself, not the graphic design but from a product design aspect. 


If the transport department of a city asked a designer to design something that could be used to pay fares for buses and undergrounds in the city, what would the designer come up with?


In the great city of London, there is the famous Oyster Card, I bet that most Londoners have one, and many people who don't live in London also may have it, for example, I got one and I love it. The concept of the Oyster Card is brilliant. 

It is a very simple design, it's basically a card, exactly the size of a normal credit card so it could be easily kept in anywhere, e.g. a wallet. It's a contactless smart card and when people use it to pay for buses or undergrounds, they only need to hold the card near a sensor, of course they also need to top it up when there is no  money in the account.

The story in Paris is very different. They have a thing called carte nominative transport, or what I heard people call it Navigo. It is also contactless smart card and the way to use it pay for buses and undergrounds is still the same, but apparently that designer thought for this design they need two separate cards, then they have to have a plastic case to keep them together. Now I am going to try describing them. 

First of all, there are three parts. A plastic case contains a paper card that wraps around a plastic card. I think the plastic card is the contactless card, there is also a chip on the back side of it so it looks like a chip-and-pin card from behind. The chip might be there for topping up. 

The paper card is twice as big as the plastic one because the paper one wraps around the plastic one. On the front, there are symbols of Paris' transport operators, a space for an ID photo, a box for the card holder to write a name, a serial number, a little window so when it's wrapped around the plastic card, the serial number on the plastic card will be seen, which will match the number on the paper card(the description is so complicated...). On the back there is something looks like terms and conditions.

Then everything are supposed to be inserted into a transparent plastic case.

While the Oyster Card is only about 0.7mm in thickness, the Navigo has a thickness of a whopping 4mm. Which is clearly way too thick for a normal wallet. Then there is a big waste of materials, and it costs more during transportation, most important of all, the plastic case and the paper card seems to be completely unnecessary. Of course one could argue that the paper card is there for the ID photo and the plastic case is to protect the whole thing, but many people don't need an ID photo and a name on their Oyster Cards and I see no problem at all with that. Even if they do need ID photos and names on the student Oyster Cards, they are printed on the cards, so still only the plastic cards are needed. 

Why do French want this kind of over complicated and unnecessary design? I thought about the cultural differences between Britain and France. Yes I am neither a Brit nor a French and I don't know too much about these two countries, at least compare to the natives. What I do know is that Brits drink lager and bitter while French drink champagne and wine, Brits eat deep fried fish and chips while French eat fine dining. Britain has cheap and cheerful Cath Kidston and in France, everybody needs to carry Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Maybe there is a natural flamboyancy in the French culture, everything needs to be delicate and attention to detail, they spend long time to do everything in France. But in Hong Kong, where people also drink champagne and carry expensive bags, they have a card which has exactly the same design as the Oyster Card, with the name of another seafood. Everywhere else in the world, all cards are designed to be cards, not something to be protected in a plastic case. 


I really think the Navigo is over-designed, and the results are really not that brilliant. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said less is more, and Dieter Rams once said less but better, they were all master designers. Look at products that are popular today, most of them very simple designs.