MikePadgett.com

Perception and assumption in warning signs

While discussing walking in Wallonie with the generous and prolific enthusiast Gert Sonck, who maintains an excellent website containing many of the routes I describe in English on my own website, I started to think about signage systems.

Signage systems

There are many examples of wonderful signage systems, perhaps nowhere more abundantly than in airports, these being a newer sort of public place into which much time, effort and modern thinking has been invested.

Many of us barely notice the flow between taxi rank and departure gate: it can be a near-unconscious exercise even in unfamiliar countries. Even though we might change a baby’s nappy, look for a wi-fi point or divert our path to a last-minute gate change, we’re more likely to be upset by queues and other ignorant passengers.

In our busy world, good signage is as important as the architecture to which it is attached. So it’s probably obvious that good signage is less easy to do where there is no architecture.

Warning signs for hunting

Out in the Belgian countryside, hunting for sport is still legal (more on that elsewhere) and whole areas of land must be cordoned off to enable the hunters to roam.

And of course, the law demands the proper signage and prescribes how it should be used.

On our walks, we have stumbled upon these signs warning us about hunting in the area. Walkers in Belgium know that when they encounter such signs, they may need to revise their path.

The rules state among other things that these signs need to be posted along all public paths affected by the area designated for hunting.

Sometimes, the paths themselves can be part of the hunting area and are at such times off-limits to the public.

Confusing signage

The real situation: Limited hunting area (centre), public path (blue) and diversion (red)

Imagine this country scene: within a fairly narrow tract of woodland there’s a hunting area in the shape of a rectangle, the top side of which is flanked by a public path (blue line). The hunters post duly their placards all along the path.

A pair of walkers follow the public path for a time but after coming across several of these placards, they decide to turn back and divert their route. They return to the edge of the woodland and skirt around the lower edges of it (red line), now assuming that the public path is off-limits.

The perceived situation with a much larger hunting area overriding public path

Later the walkers learned that the path actually remained open and that the hunting area in fact did not actually cross it but was instead contained within it.

So a failure in communication had occurred between walkers and hunters due to perceptions and assumptions. The hunters knew they had to warn walkers that their designated area was nearby. The walkers thought that they risked danger entering the area.

Perception and assumption

The root of the failure is that the hunters, by not providing any information other than lining the path with warning placards according to their legal obligations, had unwittingly caused the walkers to fall back on learned knowledge and to make false assumptions.

Let’s look at the view on the ground:

Picture 1 shows the tree-lined path as it appears to the walkers. Every so often on the left side, attached to the trees, there are the warning signs.

Picture 2 shows the reality: the warning signs refer to danger on the left side since the hunting area is inside that area. With full knowledge of the coordinates and dimensions of the hunting area, the hunters have made the assumption that their intent will be understood by the walkers.

However, the contrast between pictures 1 and 2 is considerable, since only picture 2 assumes prior knowledge of the exact location of the hunting area. In default of that knowledge, the walkers who see only picture 1 may well fall back on learned assumptions.

Accordingly, for the hunters the woodland is a static space within which they can roam within fixed, legal boundaries. For the walkers, the woodland is a thoroughfare consisting of a set of waypoints marked on a path by which they will enter, traverse, then later emerge from, the trees.

This notion of a thoroughfare causes walkers to unconsciously misapprehend the signs as a warning about what’s up ahead on the path, a function of road markings and signage. Instead of perceiving a warning about the hunting area to their left, the walkers perceive a warning about the hunting area ahead of them, and with a repetition of the placards, they eventually conclude that they have already entered the hunting area, hence the dichotomy between real and perceived situations described and illustrated above.

The final straw

Picture 3 shows the view that finally forced the walkers to turn back and divert completely around the edge of the woodland.

Already concerned about the warnings, the walkers on the thoroughfare have already used learned assumptions to define the boundaries of the path as a line of trees on either side. Of course, the woodland consists of little else but trees; what’s really different from any other line of trees is the trail of the path.

So when the walkers see ahead of them in picture 3 another warning placard with a rope between two trees, for them it’s the last straw and they turn back – the thoroughfare is blocked and the placards have warned them already.

However, looking very closely at the horizon, one can see that the path actually passes to the right of that hanging placard. At any other time during the rest of the year when there’s no hunting season, when there are no warning placards or rope cordons to trouble walkers, they would probably have perceived the path running to the right well enough.

Instead, they fail to notice that in the distance the path runs off to the right. That final warning placard hanging from a rope cordon up ahead all but monopolises the walkers’ attention.

That is, after all, what warning signs are supposed to do.

Conclusion

User-centred design requires information designers to think themselves inside the mind of those who do not already know what they do.

If you’ve come this far, you’ve probably figured out that “the walkers” were of course J and I. Here I am, calling myself an information designer, so how did I come to misjudge the size of the hunting area and fail to notice that the route was accessible?

Well, I just don’t work weekends!