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Browsing by Author "Alkharoubi, Amer"

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    Wayfinding For Pedestrians In The Crowded Areas Of Al-Hajj: How Can Wayfinding System Designs Increase The Efficiency Of Wayfinding And Navigation Performances For Pedestrian Pilgrims During The Islamic Pilgrimage (Al-Hajj)
    (2020-04) Alkharoubi, Amer
    Over the years, the lack of a thoughtful and educated wayfinding system design in the areas of Al-Hajj has caused an epidemic of adverse incidents. One of the reasons for this is that the current wayfinding system design does not support the vast diversity of this multicultural event, which includes a large number of people with different backgrounds and ethnicities. The primary goal of this study is to develop a new proposed wayfinding system that will help in increasing pilgrims’ performances and wayfinding experiences during the period of Al-Hajj. This goal is accomplished by examining the efficiency and design of the current wayfinding system and the new proposed wayfinding system according to design theories and guidelines, and users’ preferences and recommendations. The examination process started with a thorough analysis based on an extensive study of literature on design, wayfinding, and design theories and guidelines for both systems. Next, both designs are examined through two mixed-method approaches that included a series of qualitative and quantitative questions in the form of in-depth personal interviews and an online survey. The personal interviews involved six individuals who had experiences in performing Al-Hajj before, some of whom performed Al-Hajj more than 18 times, whereas the online survey targeted a more comprehensive and diverse group of participants, which resulted in 209 valid entries. For each approach, both qualitative and quantitative questions are designed with specific rubrics that help in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each system. The qualitative questions are intended to collect user viewpoints, ideas, remarks, and recommendations concerning both systems. The answers gathered from this method are thoroughly analyzed to extract as many beneficial inputs as possible that will support the topic of the research. On the other hand, the quantitative questions are intended to assist in collecting user preferences concerning design decisions and implementations, choises of language, iconography, typefaces, colors, and other design elements. The data gathered is categorized based on the participants’ completion of the survey questions, their experiences of performing Al-Hajj, and their gender. Then, a test for a difference in proportion is conducted to see how many people prefer a particular design, qualities or system over the other. The results of the study show that the current wayfinding system is found by most interviewees, participants, and literature to be inadequate, inconsistent, and unreliable. Further, the results suggest that for many, the most used wayfinding strategies did not include using the existing elements of the wayfinding system. On the other hand, the new proposed wayfinding system proved to be the preferable choice for the majority of users. On most occasions, the new proposed wayfinding system communicated clear messages, displayed correct, accurate, and readable information, and used universally-known elements such as symbols or numbers. Also, the new proposed wayfinding system was praised for its utilization of color and color-coding, creating landmarks-like features and multilingual support. Furthermore, the data collection methodologies resulted in a large number of beneficial suggestions that will help in improving and developing future wayfinding systems. These suggestions included introducing educational or training programs on wayfinding systems for pilgrims, developing and distributing multilingual brochures and handouts to pilgrims, introducing more pedestrian walkways and services, integrating the system with Google maps, and using tracking chips that link between pilgrims’ bracelets and wayfinding elements.