Disability-Specific Spatial Friction in Department Store Interiors: A Mixed-Methods Study of Inclusive Retail Design

Department store interiors are complex public interior environments in which circulation, wayfinding, visual perception, sensory comfort, and staff interaction operate simultaneously. Although accessibility is increasingly discussed in built environment research, disabled users’ experiences in retail interiors are often evaluated through aggregated indicators that may conceal disability-specific barriers. This study investigates how disabled users experience department store interiors and formulates an exploratory, conceptual, user-experience-based spatial friction framework for inclusive retail design. A convergent mixed-methods design was used. Perception-based quantitative data were collected from 105 disabled users through a 14-item, five-point Likert-type user-experience scale, while qualitative data were obtained from 101 participants whose open-ended responses were suitable for thematic coding. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, one-way ANOVA, Tukey HSD post hoc comparisons, and dimension-level comparisons. Qualitative analyses included theme and code frequency analysis, disability-type theme intensity, and participant-level code co-occurrence analysis. The findings show that the five user-experience dimensions ranged from 2.89 to 3.40, with Auditory and Sensory Comfort and Physical Circulation and Access Comfort emerging as the lowest-scoring dimensions. Qualitative findings identified Visual Perception and Lighting as the most intensive theme, particularly among visually impaired users. Code co-occurrence analysis showed that inadequate warning/wayfinding signage was a prominent, frequently co-occurring friction point associated with wayfinding difficulty, complex layout, narrow corridors, crowding, stairs, lighting, label readability, and elevator problems. The study contributes an exploratory, conceptual, user-experience-based disability-specific spatial friction framework that organizes user-reported barriers into design-relevant patterns for inclusive retail interiors.