Although services on the tube and DLR can sometimes be disappointing, frustrating and wholly uncomfortable I find the actual TFL website to be quite the opposite. Without micro-analysing it in complete detail, it provides a good balance between a useful service and entertainment (i.e. competitions and leisure ideas). Sure, it sticks a lot of information inside PDFs and a few tweaks could be made to the journey planner, but the overall site experience is generally a positive one.

The homepage demonstrates a lot of the site’s good points. The tube network already has a lot of established colours for its tube lines and carrying these over to the site – on a predominantly white background – really makes those elements stand out and makes the site more engaging. I imagine most user activities are covered with the ‘live’ service updates board, the journey planner, oyster card and congestion zone areas all getting real estate on the mainpage, as well as a ‘transport mode’ categorisation starting point further down the page offering a good alternative to the main navigation sections that appear to target the key high-level goals of the site’s users.

More recently, they’ve introduced funky iPhone-style icons to the site, highlighting all the different tools they have available to their users. With free mobile services / tools, the TFL site and service is really embracing the mobile and web platform for the benefit of their users.

All this gives us a better perception of TFL overall but, in the real world we live in, all positive brand emotions can be wiped out in an instant when you come up against those magic words: “Service suspended”.