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Appropriate Behaviours
A neon sign at the bottom of this stairwell commands people walking up to only use the far left lane. The recent addition of bright red and green lines acknowledges that commuters ignored the sign and provides additional guidelines for what appropriate behaviour. A less formal version of traffic lights perhaps, but with a degree of authority never-the-less. Attitudes to authority changes according to contexts and cultures (cultural differences are well covered in this book).
Today street signs show up-to-date status information for many things including the number of empty parking bays in car parks (Brighton+), the length of time left before the traffic lights change (Bangalore+), to which is the least congested route into the city (Tokyo+). How will the way we navigate spaces change as manufacturers find cost effective ways to embed status indicators into everything from fabrics to wall papers, hand-rails to stairwells, pavements and roads?
Writing from Shibuya | January 21, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
Hey Jan, caught your presentation last night and was impressed and inspired. thanks.
I've been contemplating the up/down thing at stations for quite a while. And think the heart of the matter rests in there being no commonly defined patterns of navigation - as with a phone or any other interface experience, as we become more advanced users we expect/assume a lot and base our decisions accordingly. However, in Tokyo society these distinctions, when it comes to movement access are vague - we drive on the left, but stand on different sides escalator in Tokyo and Kansai (where keep left pass right as in UK would seem an obvious choice). And on your bike, for instance, there seems to be no common movement decision - do you stay on the left or rhs of the pavement, and on which side do you pass pedestrians. The same goes for moving up stairs - sometimes up is on the left and down is on the right. And there seems to be a propensity for rhs crowd movement on busy streets amongst other things. It often amuses me how within the choas of a shinjuku rush hour, the signage is ignored and a natural balance is found - as in your pics, where users adapt the "interface" to their needs.
There's a road in South Africa, where i'm from, and i'm sure there are plenty like this all over the place, where the number of lanes coming in and out of the city change according to the flow of traffic. and although they're clearly demarcated - somehow effectively driving on the rhs of the road 'feels' wrong.
i suppose there's legacy issues - one an interface has been decided on and becomes ubiquitous - it's difficult to change - even if there is a better interface available - QWERTY keyboard, America's insistence of no adopting the metric system.
So i guess the long and short of it is that signage or interfaces can guide the user, but if it goes against the user needs, expect customisation/adaption/hacking.
Posted by: george at January 26, 2006 9:28 PM