Which way is up : towards accessible wayfinding in transit stations

Passengers' most frequent interaction with a rail transit system is at its stations, which represent the beginning, the end and sometimes the middle of transit trips. The design of these stations can greatly affect a user's travel experience by creating friendly, efficient, attractive environments that are inherently usable as transit stations. Many types of devices are necessary in these stations to help people navigate from one point to another within a transit system. Wayfinding devices are the elements, whether architectural or graphic, that provide information not only on how to navigate a station, but also how to use the services provided there. Because they provide such important information, these elements must be accessible to all potential passengers. This thesis used the structure of Systems Engineering to give a clear focus to the problem of design accessible wayfinding systems in transit stations. In order to create a comprehensive listing of design requirements for these systems, a detailed inventory of all potential user groups was developed. Following directly from this, a framework was developed that allows for easy cataloging of the design requirements for each of these groups.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Leven, Dalia (Dalia Beth)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kenneth E. Kruckemeyer.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35088

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35088