지하철 환승역의 이용자 Wayfinding 행태특성연구

Abstract

Subway stations in Seoul play fundamental roles since they offer easy accessibility to major tourist attractions from beginning to end of travel for foreign tourists. And yet, it is hard to find the ways for them in subways because present subway stations have high pedestrian density and complex spatial structure, and they are situated in the underground. Therefore, this study aims to suggest a guideline to be used in the design for subway stations by exploring preceding studies and literature and, through field study, by finding out the behavioral characteristics shown in the paths to destinations of subways users. The results from the investigation and analysis are as follows; First, the failure to subway way-finding mainly stems from the long pedestrian passage, the frequent changes of direction, inadequacy of signage, and the similarity and complexity of perceived environmental information. Second, it turned out that psychological reactions of users after the failure of subway wayfinding are workings of defense mechanisms such as anger, confusion, resignation and fear, which even lead to the avoidance of the space itself or visit to the space. To improve this situation, this study suggests placement of sufficient helping guides and improvement of spatial structure to reduce crowdedness and emphasizes the importance of signage development which complements visibility and attention. Third, unlike those in Japanese subways, current designs of guidance signs in subway of Seoul don't have unified positions of arrows, sizes of letters and typefaces. Thus, even in the subway stations of a same line, there are different designs of guidance signs, for which reason, it takes a long time to convey necessary information to the subway users and, what is worse, those designs make users feel confused. Therefore, it is recommended that, to address the problems arising out of non-unified designs, the signage system for all subway stations should be modified and complemented by standardization of designs with production of manual for the unity of designs and marking methods.