Usability - Subway Station Directions
September 28th, 2007This time, I didn’t see a great usability decision made in a coffee shop. Instead, it was at the Queen St subway station.
If I am like most people, when you exit a subway train and climb the stairs to the main level of the station, you have no idea what direction you are facing. Without a sense of direction, you are faced with choosing from at least 2 different exits - each exit then branching into at least 2 (often 3) different staircases leading to street level. The signage in the station that describes these exits is usually hard to find or read, and requires a few seconds to process. A few more seconds than you have. If you ride the subway during rush hour, stopping to process the sign is like stopping to tie your shoes during the running of the bulls. So you blindly pick an exit, and hope for the best. After 5 trips to work, I figure it out, but non-regulars don’t have that kind of time.
So, what did I see this morning? Directly in front of where the turnstiles let thousands of people out of the station, in the centre of the station, on the floor - where most people are looking - is a large white arrow, in a black circle, with an N at the top. It looks just like one of those things on a map, that point north, so you know which way to hold it. Gosh Beav’, maybe it is one of those things.
Instantly, I knew exactly which direction I was facing, thus which exit to take, then which branching exit to follow. Brilliant. It probably cost all of $20, and might actually help someone.
I hope to see more where that came from.
September 28th, 2007 at 9:51 am
It’s been my experience that using compass directions is a distinctly Torontonian thing. So while the big N is probably useful to the locals, most people stopping to orient themselves might not even know which direction North is. I had this problem when I moved here (it still isn’t second nature), and I know of people who have left and confused people in their new city by giving directions like that — “What? Go west? Is that left or right?”
October 7th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
It’s definitely a Torontonian thing- I miss it. Coming from Toronto, where identifying the location of a particular building is as easy as indicating that it is either on the NW, NE, SW or SE corner of some arbitrary intersection, I found it surprising that this isn’t a normal means of conveying directions in the Bay area of California. At first, I thought it was because there weren’t many streets that follow the North/South or East/West pattern, but a lot of areas here actually do. Maybe it’s an east coast thing?
October 11th, 2007 at 8:09 am
hmm.. interesting perspective. I assumed that tourists and locals know which way north is because they’ve looked at a map at some point, so the arrow would orient them.
I’m guilty of having driven UP yonge when I thought I was going DOWN because I didn’t know which way north was.
I guess an alternative would use a diagram of the street (hybrid or map view) on the ground of the station, so you know visually where you are, as well as a north indicator. It would be handy if the map had numbers on it, so people looking for a specific address would know which direction to head. It is a much more complicated solution, but it just involves printing out a few google map tiles.
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