IH02-Anar Joshi
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
Persuasive Design for Campus, City, and Community
Problem Description
As a nation, we have a huge dependency on our cars as the primary mode of transportation. This need not only is detrimental to our environment, but also impairs our ability to exercise. Many major cities in America are so reliant on cars, that they have never fully developed a public transportation system to facilitate those citizens who don’t have access to cars. When it is a viable option, walking should be encouraged because it is an efficient and sustainable mode of travel.
Target User Group
San Francisco is home to around 700,000 citizens and also hosts a huge tourist market (more than 15 million in 2005). All of these people create a potential market for promoting and making San Francisco a “walkable” city. However, my proposed design primarily targets the people that do not live in the city itself. My principal target market is the tourists that come to San Francisco from across the world. San Francisco is home to one the most well-known Californian landmarks, The Golden Gate Bridge. Other major tourist attractions include Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Cable Cars. Especially in a place like San Francisco, people generally visit with their families, as a couple, or in a tour group. They are more likely to visit during the summer months or during the holiday season and stay for at the most a week. Most tourists not only want to see the major attractions of the city, but also experience the culture. They want to see how people live their everyday lives and interact with locals. For many people traveling is an experience of a new society and a learning adventure. The secondary market that I will be looking at consists of the inhabitants of the Bay Area with a population of 7 million. Many of these people live and work outside of the city, but come into San Francisco on the weekends to shop, go to one of the cultural institutions or enjoy an afternoon in one of the city’s parks. The makeup this group is largely diverse since it includes college students, families, and essentially anyone visiting the city. They have come to spend a few leisurely hours to experience what an urban landscape offers and then return home.
Problem Context and Forces
My first target market is tourists who are staying in the city, but are unfamiliar with how to get from one attraction to the next. They have the option to use either public transportation, take a cab, or walk. This group is the most likely to walk in order to enjoy the experience of being in San Francisco. Many tourists have the desire to see what life is like being a local, and the only real way to discover this is by interacting with people on the streets. The second target market is the people who come into the city from the greater Bay Area. This includes families coming into the city to go to the theater, university students going to an exhibition at the SF MOMA, and even people that want to enjoy an afternoon at Golden Gate Park. Most people would prefer not to bring their cars into the city, because it is hard and expensive to find parking. Therefore, they too have similar options as the first market identified. Many people have found the MUNI system in San Francisco to be impossible to comprehend and not many use it that live in the city. Therefore it is hard to imagine a tourist would consider using the system for their short visit in San Francisco. In terms of cabs, the city does not possess the resources for every person to hail a cab successfully within the first few minutes of waiting at a street corner. Due to this inconvenience, people do not tend to use cabs as much as someone would who lived in New York City, for example. Recognizing that these two options available to people have their respective drawbacks, it seems apparent that more people should choose walking as their primary mode of transportation. Unfortunately, the current design of the city is not supportive of this activity. There are many other cities across the world that have made it a major initiative to develop their cities into places that are more conducive to walking. Current solutions that exist include building wider sidewalks, creating places for leisure not just access walkways, and making sure that there are pedestrian lights at every street light.
Solution Sketch
I think that a way to encourage people, especially people visiting the city for a week or even for a few hours is by having signs to guide people through the city. These signs would include information such as tourist attractions, public restrooms, parks, or BART/MUNI stations that are walking distance (10 minutes) from them. The sign would point in the direction of the attraction and say approximately how many minutes it would take to walk there.
Figure 1: Sign at Powell Station
These signs should be at all BART stops as well as in 10 minute walking radius of major attractions such as Fisherman’s Wharf or Golden Gate Park where there are no BART stations. Each successive sign should be placed in 2 minute increments. For example, when you get off at Powell Station, the Yerba Buena Center is at least a 10 minute walk, so there should be five signs to guide pedestrians from the BART station to the Yerba Buena Center.
Figure 2: Map of signs from Powell BART station to Yerba Buena Center
I believe that with the use of these signs tourists and day-visitors to San Francisco will be encouraged to walk around the city. This will further emphasize the image of San Francisco as environmentally friendly and improve the personal health of the visitors. Additionally, walking will also prove to be beneficial to the economy of the city by supporting tourism as well local businesses that will profit from the new walkers in the area.
