Finding the Way at Kraków Główny Railway Station: A Detail of Confusion Points in Eye Tracker Experiment

Abstract

A wearable eye tracking device was used to study path and focus of 25 young people from three nations who were given the task of finding their way at the new main railway station in Krakow, Poland (the station is located underground, with access through a shopping gallery). Preliminary analysis demonstrated that almost all of the test participants became confused in the station hall area. The signs in that space inadequately point the direction to the ticket counters, as was evidenced by the test participants stopping and turning around in search for visual information. The test participants were confused between 2.0 and 35.4 s at the entrance to the station hall and between 4.0 and 39.7 s inside the station hall. Their average speed decreased by approximately 25%. Consistently, test participants from Croatia for longer time did not know which way to go than those from Russia. The test participants from Russia were more likely to stop and look for visual guidance while those from Croatia kept going without knowing which way to proceed, most frequently using as a cue the prevailing movement of other people. Test participants from Poland were least confused most likely due to their familiarity with the area; nonetheless 83% of them became confused at some point during their wayfinding task.