Keywords

1 Introduction

Crowded places present many dangers to people. Mainly when people concentrate on the exit of a building at the time of a disaster or a festival, a concert event, there is no move at all because of congestion, and injured persons occur in some cases. Sugiman et al. [1] propose ‘Follow Me method’ in which each leader takes only one evacuee to an exit. And Sugiman et al. [1] showed that ‘Follow-Me method’ is better as compared to ‘Follow Directions method,’ in which each leader indicates the direction with a loud voice and vigorous gestures. On the other hand, the studies on ‘Follow Me methods’ using virtual agents using digital signage are not in progress. Signage display is the general name of electronic signage to display digital images, movies, or texts. The number of installed signage display has increased rapidly at stations, airports and large facilities around the world in recent years [2]. Japanese Digital Signage Consortium [3] has developed the contents’ guideline to be displayed on the signage display in the disaster. However, the signage display using on disaster currently being studied is limited to presenting disaster information and attention, evacuation route and direction and so on.

This study proposes to use digital mirror signage and augmented reality (AR) pictogram animation for Follow Me evacuation guidance. Moreover, this study designs and evaluates three pictogram animations “Beckoning,” “Running,” “Pulling” because to discuss how to move pictograms for guidance.

2 System Proposal

This study proposes the Follow Me system which uses signage display of the station or the stadium when there is not enough staff. Figure 1 shows the image of this system. This system consists of a camera, signage display, and an augmented reality program. When this signage display system displays a passerby like a mirror, a pictogram emerges side of its face and indicating guide staff movement.

Fig. 1.
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Follow-me system using digital mirror signage.

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The authors consider that the proposed system can contribute to the advance improvement of the situation of congestion of people. However, it is not clear what movement is useful for AR pictogram.

3 Evaluation

3.1 Purpose

The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of motion effect for Follow Me evacuation guidance the case of using digital mirror signage. And we proposed three pictogram motions. Figure 2 shows them. Type A is a beckoning motion, type B is a running motion, type C is a pulling motion.

Fig. 2.
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Follow Me pictogram animations.

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3.2 System

In this evaluation, digital mirror signage system uses Spark AR Studio [4]. Spark AR Studio [4] can create an augmented reality object on the side of the user’s face using a web camera. The augmented reality object, three types of pictogram animations (Fig. 2) were made using Stykz [5]. This system uses the projector screen instead of a signage display.

3.3 Participants

Table 1 shows participants’ ID and gender. The ID shows the order of participants’ experience type A or B or C. The number of males is fifteen and females is four. All participants’ age is the early twenties.

Table 1. Participants’ ID, gender, and their results of questionnaire.
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3.4 Flow

Figure 3 shows the flow chart of this evaluation. And Fig. 4 shows the walking route of participants which ID is ABCx. After obtaining informed consent, the experimenter instructs a participant to stand at the start point. Participants walk to the screen, and after confirming the pictogram animation (type A), they need to choose right or left root. After that, the participant answer questionnaire and interview. Participants repeat the process of type B and type C.

Fig. 3.
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Flow chart of the evaluation (Pattern of ABC1, ABC2, ABC3).

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Fig. 4.
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Visual analog scale.

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In the questionnaire, participants answer about a feeling of “I need to choose this root” by drawing a vertical line on a line segment of 10 cm shown in Fig. 4 (visual analog scale) (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
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Walking route for the evaluation.

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In the interview, experimenter makes Participant Journey Analysis Map (Pa-JAMap) which inspired from Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM) [6] and customer journey map. As shown in Figs. 7, 8, and 9, the PaJAMap diagram shows the element of how the participants judged by looking at the pictogram and walked the left or the right root. Therefore, those elements become the reasons for the eventually selected or impeded actions.

3.5 Result

Table 1 shows the result of the questionnaire using the visual analog scale. Figure 6 shows the box-and-whisker plot about type A, B, and C. The results from the one-way ANOVA showed the difference is significant (p < .05).

Fig. 6.
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Box-and-whisker plot.

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Figures 7, 8, and 9 show the representative PaJAMaps created by type A, B, and C interviews. Figures 7 and 8 indicated that all elements exist in the same direction (up arrow) to the route which was induced by the system. On the other hand, Fig. 9 indicates that some elements push to another route.

Fig. 7.
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PaJAMap figures of Type A.

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Fig. 8.
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PaJAMap figures of Type B

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Fig. 9.
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PaJAMap figures of Type C

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3.6 Discussion

In this evaluation, we can find that type B received a high evaluation from participants. However, some participants felt the need to hurry move from type B’s running animation (Fig. 8). There may be a possibility of attributed to ‘Conformity’. Conformity is the human behavior that follows the usual standards that are expected by a group or society [7]. Therefore, type B has a possibility of useless in the calm behavior requirement.

About type A, some participants had negatively answered because they felt luring customer movement or the action from the top of the eyes. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss deliberately, when we design of beckoning pictogram animation.

About type C, most participants confused because the movement looks like whether pushing and pulling. Hence, this system needs to review the moving design of pulling.

4 Conclusion

In this study, the authors proposed to use digital mirror signage and augmented reality (AR) pictogram animation for Follow Me evacuation guidance. Moreover, the authors designed and evaluated three pictogram animations “Beckoning,” “Running,” “Pulling” because to discuss how to move pictograms for guidance. The results of using visual analog scale evaluation by nineteen participants, “Running” pictogram animation received high evaluation marks (p < .05). Besides, the authors interviewed participants with something felt in time series. After that, participant and the authors created the Participant Journey Analysis Map (PaJAMap) which inspired from the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM). The result of the analysis shows that “Beckoning” can feel antipathy, “Running” was characterized ‘Conformity’ type of Follow Me moving, “Pulling” had sometimes confused with ‘Pushing.’ From the above results, the Follow Me evacuation guidance methods which using digital mirror signage and AR pictograms obtained a certain reputation by the participants. However, moving design of pictogram needs to discuss deliberately.

In the future works, the authors plan to improve AR pictogram design on the digital mirror signage which using “Follow Me method,” and to study using multi-digital mirror signage displays.