Beep Boop
Made by Amber Jones, Teddy Lee, Jacob Slone and Kristen Smith
Made by Amber Jones, Teddy Lee, Jacob Slone and Kristen Smith
Our intended goal is to keep people from jaywalking, and as a result, promote safety in congested intersections. The crosswalk on Forbes Avenue is a perfect example of a place to watch pedestrian behavior. When people intend to cross the street, they’re checking for three factors to allow them to do so - a red traffic light, the crosswalk sound, and the stop hand on the crosswalk sign. Currently, there is a prevalent gap in time between the sound cutoff, when the stop hand on the traffic light turns solid, and when the traffic light turns green.If we were to make the stop hand and crosswalk sound cohesive, this would allow people a better understanding of when to cross the street, and when to not do so. Our plan is to not only change how the crosswalk signal sounds, but to also change how the stop hand reacts to the crosswalk signal. We believe that if we were to replace the beep-boop sound with notes that speed up to let the pedestrians know when the crossing time is running out, their behavior would change. People generally conform to the beat of music, so if the notes on the crosswalk speed up to indicate that they’re running out of time, a pedestrian would understand whether they should cross quickly or wait until the next light. One major example of this is the classic tune on Jeopardy which signals the elapsing of a contestant's time. Similarly, if we were to replace the stop hand with-- or add to it-- a countdown clock that is synced with the notes, this would prevent several people from jaywalking, thus increasing their chances of crossing the street safely.
Created: September 5th, 2014
Our intended goal is to keep people from jaywalking, and as a result, promote safety in congested intersections. The crosswalk on Forbes Avenue is a perfect example of a place to watch pedestrian behavior. When people intend to cross the street, they’re checking for three factors to allow them to do so - a red traffic light, the crosswalk sound, and the stop hand on the crosswalk sign. Currently, there is a prevalent gap in time between the sound cutoff, when the stop hand on the traffic light turns solid, and when the traffic light turns green.If we were to make the stop hand and crosswalk sound cohesive, this would allow people a better understanding of when to cross the street, and when to not do so.
Our plan is to not only change how the crosswalk signal sounds, but to also change how the stop hand reacts to the crosswalk signal. We believe that if we were to replace the beep-boop sound with notes that speed up to let the pedestrians know when the crossing time is running out, their behavior would change. People generally conform to the beat of music, so if the notes on the crosswalk speed up to indicate that they’re running out of time, a pedestrian would understand whether they should cross quickly or wait until the next light. One major example of this is the classic tune on Jeopardy which signals the elapsing of a contestant's time. Similarly, if we were to replace the stop hand with-- or add to it-- a countdown clock that is synced with the notes, this would prevent several people from jaywalking, thus increasing their chances of crossing the street safely.
As I said in the other project with the same topic, I think a lot of people jaywalk because the "beep boops" don't really last long enough for people to cross fully anyway, and because there is such a large gap in times between light changes (good observations), people realize that they can get away with crossing a little later and not having to wait for at least 2 extra minutes to cross. When I had to cross the street more often, I found that, when walking at a normal pace and only crossing once the beeps started, I don't make it to the other side before the beeps stop. I think in this case fewer people would jaywalk if the beeps lasted a bit longer and the wait between crosses was a little bit shorter.
I think in this case, people would not stop jaywalking, although your intuition about sound indicating the necessary pace to safely cross the street seems fair. The longer someone is exposed to something, the less impact it has on them, and since most of the people crossing these streets are going to/from school several times a day, 5+ days a week, the sound would eventually be ignored to some extent. Perhaps there's a way you could work around that?
Creative title. Maybe instead of just slowing down the beeps, you could have a voice that counts down once the orange hand starts.
This is a clever idea for a problem I've always noticed, but never thought to solve! Adding a countdown clock and synchronizing the beep-boop, I believe, should help pedestrians gauge how long they have to cross. However, from my experience walking around cities like San Francisco, this and the accelerating beeping noise may not be enough; in fact, as discussed previously, it may persuade others farther from the road to speed up and cross. Accelerating noise may also cause stress-- personally, I would feel pressured whenever I hear that sound, even when not crossing the street.
Perhaps an alternative, as mentioned in class, is to distract pedestrians. One clever trick I saw on the internet involved a game of pong with a person waiting across the street from you. A simpler solution could be to play calming music as pedestrians are waiting, or display a small animation with the (estimated) wait time. This way, pedestrians can find something to do while standing around.
I like how you guys thought of speeding up the music to play to a person's psyche. It would definitely instill a sense of urgency in them, causing less people to start jaywalking. However, one observation that I have made in my daily usage of that crosswalk is that most of the jaywalking takes place when the light is green for vehicles from Morewood avenue to turn left or right into Forbes Avenue. This could be due to the fact that traffic on Forbes would be moving faster so when that traffic is stopped in the previous instance, people are more inclined to jaywalk. Perhaps a way to improve on this would be some method to show the time left before the traffic light changes from Morewood traffic to Forbes traffic?
@Amanda As you said, the ideal solution would be to readjust the light timing, but from our minimal knowledge of traffic engineering in large cities, this would disrupt the traffic in much of oakland and require re-timings on almost all the lights around CMU which would be disruptive and prohibitively expensive, so our goal was a non-disruptive embodied solution that did not require significant readjustment on drivers or crossers part, but would be intuitive enough whee you could see decent changes almost immediately.
Ivan, thanks for the insight about the sound being stressful. We never quite considered how it would make people feel who weren't even crossing the street. Hopefully, though, as people got used to the system, they would internalize it and not be alarmed by it (much like how people get used to the sounds that exist now the longer they stay at CMU).
Our group originally had the idea of installing a giant board above the stoplight that could be seen from down the sidewalk on either side of the street. It, in theory, would show pedestrians the amount of time that they would have to wait for the next light. People may not take the time to interact with a game, especially in the freezing cold when they don't even want to take their hands out of their pockets, but seeing how long they have to wait may help them feel less worried about crossing in a timely manner.
Thank you for the feedback. Ivan, you mentioned about having a visual cue - a visual countdown synchronized with the crosswalk sound. This idea was actually proposed in addition to the implementation of the new 'beep-boop's. However this was not added in our final project. I agree that adding a visual cue would give the pedestrian a better time estimate. I also agree with Rikky's point about adding a countdown time for the Forbes/Morewood traffic. Our original intentions were to inform pedestrians with so much (accurate and precise) information (through visual and sound cues) that they would be less inclined to jaywalk. Adding these visual cues would make it easier for someone to gauge their time and pace themselves.
I believe the intention was to extend the duration of the beeps so it lead all the way up to the end of the light instead of ending early as it does now. As far as people rushing from further away, do you think decreasing the volume of the beeps so they did not carry as far, as well as adding a timer which was a countdown to the next time it will be safe to cross would help with this? My intuition tells me that the visual cue of the timer would take precedence over the noise at a distance, and people waiting at the crosswalk may stare at the timer instead of trying to jaywalk.
Saw this on my newsfeed and it reminded me of your project :) http://sfglobe.com/?id=13124
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