A STUDY ON READABILITY OF ORDINARY GUIDE SIGNS IN SUBWAY STATIONS USING A VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIMENT

To mitigate the problem of getting lost in complicated subway stations, this study conducted a virtual reality (VR) experiment to analyze the factors affecting sign readability, using a virtual space simulating the inside of the Sakae Station, Nagoya, Japan. The effect of spatial angles between the pedestrians and signs on the Sign-Reading Distance in a three-dimensional space was analyzed. Three metrics were calculated to analyze the possible reasons why pedestrians miss signs: the Sign-Read Rate (gross), Sign-Coverage Rate, and Sign-Read Rate (net). The validity of the VR experiment was suggested by comparing the results to those of an actual-space experiment.