Assumption versus clarity in road-crossing design
The BBC reports that London mayor Boris Johnson is planning changes to the iconic road-crossing symbol. Once, both signs and usability were very similar in a huge range of countries, and in the UK you grow up learning that ‘a little green man’ means ‘walk’, and a red man means ‘walk only if you fancy getting run over’. (Of course, some countries have alternate crossing icons, including the USA, which unfortunately often favours using English—walk/don’t walk—in favour of language-independent icons.)
In recent years, I’ve noticed a surprising and disappointing trend towards diversity. When Fleet high street (Fleet being the town in Hampshire where I live) was revamped, so were the crossings. Rather than looking across the road at the ‘icons’ to see whether it is safe to cross, you now have to look towards the symbol on the same side of the road as you. I’m sure someone somewhere surmised that this was a more logical thing to do, but convention has long been otherwise, and I’ve watched people in my town—particularly young children—struggle with this upheaval.
In London, Johnson is planning on taking things further, replacing the standard icons with a countdown timer, primarily to hurry people across the road. However, with existing iconography so ingrained and clear, there’s a massive danger that pedestrians will have to revert to assumption when it comes to safely crossing. In general design, such as icons on websites, assumption is never a good thing and can hamper usability. But in road systems, it’s downright dangerous.
I’m not sure I mind a countdown system as long as it’s in addition to the standard icon, less so to hurry pedestrians along and more to let them know the remaining time on their Green light so they can make an informed decision on whether or not to begin cross.
But I think traffic lights should have the same system while we’re at it. Just a countdown to say how long is remaining on the Green/Red states, so drivers can decide whether or not to put the handbrake on and slip into neutral—something which I see regularly hold up traffic.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to give people more information to go on, as long as it doesn’t move into the land of the verbose. If it helps flow of both road traffic and pedestrians, I’m all for it. Whether or not this new system will have that effect, though, I couldn’t say.
Changing simple “graphic” safety systems is shear madness.
As with Gareth, I agree that “adding” a countdown timer is a good idea. I saw them in Dublin whilst on holiday a few years ago.
Actually, I didn’t take them as a way to (quote) “make an informed decision on whether or not to begin crossing”.
Instead, I took them as a way to prevent dangerous jaywalking – as you can see straight away “I only have to wait 13 seconds for a green light – why risk it?” And – other people will see the timer, so you have a kind of “crowd reinforcement” in that you don’t want to be seen as “the impatient pr*ck who couldn’t wait 7 seconds”.