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Sign

Brief

Form a team of three.

Research and create a signage intervention in DJCAD.

Make and install physical signage and /or objects that will affect the behaviour of people in a chosen space.

install it in DJCAD on Tuesday 20th November. It should be in place for 1-2 hours and must leave no trace of when you remove it.

Discreetly observe and document people’s reactions, interactions and behaviour around the signage.

Document your design process and observations in a blog entry.

Colour

Above is what I have found out about the common colours used in signage. each colour have their own corresponding meaning to it, therefore it would be easy for people to identify what do mean in the least period amount of time.

Here are some examples of signage with these colour.

Initial thoughts

The first idea is that we could have a simple sign on the wall, that says look down, or to have red and blue flashing lights to symbolize police, this way it may catch peoples attention more. Also, there is a “Dead body” in the pit to give the people the sense that they are looking at a crime scene. Another option was elevated from a wall in DJCAD. It’s just a simple sign saying “look down”. We didn’t do any fancy font or a nice frame, this was because we can see what people’s reaction would be purely based on how and where the sign is positioned.

So we made a cardboard stand and just glued on two pieces of paper on each side so that people walking from both directions can see them.

The idea is built on the fact the people are not used to having things out a place, especially down something like a liner corridor. Therefore, the slightest change would catch people’s attention. Just like if you are walking down a street and you see a pub sign sticking out from the wall.

The second idea is build up on the first. We thought that by introducing a line on the floor that would get people to follow the line naturally then we can have one end that split off over the ledge, therefore making people look over.

This was inspired by a image of the london victoria station where the line on the floor allow people to follow.

The third and Final idea was to have a simple command like a road sign “STOP”.

So we thought that maybe a simple command could get someone’s attention and get them to carry out the command. this way we can see how and witch command is most effective.

We collected the data by sitting at a distance away and record the amount of people walk pass the sign and also record how many people reacted to the sign. We recorded the data by using a tally chart, this way we can calculate the percentage of people that have reacted to the sign, therefore, we don’t have to worry about the population of people walking pass a specific spot. Here are the results:

For improvement, we decided to add in stick men and concentrated on making a sign into a road sign with a specific font. The font we decided is Margret Calvert. That is the common font that is used in all road signs across the world. The letters and the border on the road signs are in white and the rest are in blue. The point of doing so is that we are trying to catch peoples attention, and road sign has proven to be very effective.

We also wanted to add in stick men so that the signs have a bit of character and hopefully that can be passed on to the people that are walking past. Furthermore, we added a stick man under the original sign to say lookup, One is to make the people who reacted to look down to look up, two is to make people who are walking underneath look up.

The making of the sign

To make the sign was fairly easy. We used scrap wood that had a slot already cut. this way we could just cut the wood in length and make the frame. We then found a scrap poll, so we sanded the side down and attached the frame to the poll. The method we used to attach the parts together was to used wood screws and metal L-shaped brackets.

For the sign itself, we used paper and masking tape. we worked out the proportions of the font that we are using and drawn out the letters, we then put masking table over the text so that when we spray paint the background the text remains white. We did that for both sides. In the end, all we needed to do was to slot in the Sign that we made.

We also made the stickmen that will hang off the sign as well as the stick man that’s going to hold up the sign at the bottom. We cut them out of cardboard and hot glued the stick on to the bottom and the

Final observation and results

For our Final testing and data collecting, our main aim is to see if the improvement we have made to the sign has an overall effect on the percentage of people reacting to the sign. We then stationed our selves close to the sign so we can observe peoples behaviour, we also had one member of our group stationed downstairs with another sign saying look up. We then sat and collected data for 1 and half hour to gain reliable data.

The result shows an increase in people reacting to the signs. People walk past and look down then looks up expecting to find something.