Observation

I chose to observe the walk/stop light for pedestrians at the intersection of Jay St. and Myrtle Ave. After observing the light I was wondering if this should be considered interactive technology since the light does not switch because of the user, instead it is on a timer and will continue to switch even if no one is there. Based off of the Norman and Crawford reading I think this would not be considered interactive technology because nothing is being triggered or responded to. However, I do think that this was a useful piece of communications technology to observe because it is very frequently and it serves important purposes in our lives namely safety and traffic flow.

I specifically chose this light because it had a push button so that pedestrians could presumably tell the light they were there. I have always wondered if these work or if they are fake button to help humans feel like they have agency. I observed the intersection for 15 minutes (on September 25th from 11:45am-12:00pm) and only 1 person pressed the button.

In total I watched 192 people cross the street with a walk signal and 64 people cross the street without a walk signal.

On average 21 people crossed the street per walk signal and 9 people crossed the street per stop signal.

One problem I noticed was that when there was a stop signal for foot traffic pedestrians would move out into the bike lane and parking area in order to see if they could cross the street between cars. See drawing below, pedestrians are depicted at stars:

Of course it is really dangerous for bikers and pedestrians to stand in or cross the bike lane. I think this is a really big design issue.

The other issue I ran into was that I was standing at the light for 15 minutes and 3 different people asked me where they could find something in the Jay St Metrotech area. For each of the people I noticed that english was not their first language and 2 out of the 3 were tourists. It became clear to me in 15 minutes that this area needs an information/tourist booth.