Cityzi, in Nice organized a tour to try out their services. This is basically how it works: you buy a phone from certain operators selling the NFC equipped Cityzi phone and you have access to using NFC payment and transport in the city. Nice also has over 16 tag-based stops for finding out more about the historical sights of the city.
The tags have a common look in the tram stops and in the sights, including also 2D barcodes. The tags look interesting, however the positioning of the signage and the text and other visualizations around it might confuse the users. Certainly, the users need to have some more information about the sights than just the tag but then again the tag might get lost in the middle of everything else. Should the tags look similar all over the world and who is to make that decision? What is the first thing people vision when they hear the word tag? These should be considered together to get a clear message to the users: “This is a tag, try it out”!
We know how difficult it is to position signs and tags to the cityscape as there are restrictions where and what you can actually attach. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why some of the tags were too high to notice and some too low to reach easily.
Paying with the NFC phone proved to be easy, it basically worked similarly as with card where the user certifies the payment with a pin code. I could easily imagine forgetting my wallet at home where as phone is something I always carry with me. However, issues with navigating with and between the payment and transportation application remain and the user would still need more information on for example where are these 1400 payment locations situated in Nice.
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