Need to better educate users about sidewalk design

[jonfroehlich]

There are opportunities for us to better educate our users about sidewalk design + accessibility, including how wide sidewalks can have sidewalk furniture on curbside as long as there is a sufficiently wide pedestrian zone. Could do this in our interactive tutorial, during mission screens, and in our labeling guide.

Some inspirational graphics:

from https://montgomeryplanning.org/planning/communities/midcounty/rock-spring-and-white-flint-2-design-guidelines/

Similarly, can better show/teach users about why sidewalk cross slopes matter: from https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/accessible_sidewalks_and_street_crossings_boodlal.pdf

[jonfroehlich]

Here are some examples of incorrect obstacle labels. These objects are not in the pedestrian pathway and a wheelchair rider has plenty of room to pass. We should be able to inform our users about this via some nice graphical depictions.

[jonfroehlich]

I personally think we could add in stuff like this (but our own sketch) into the mission screens (and other places) to help. What do you think @isavin12?

[isavin12]

Agreed, and from looking above I think it would be most effective to communicate this info in perspective/axon view because that's how our users will be experiencing these issues while mapping. I think this would be handy to have while mapping in a "field guide" tab like in Zooniverse. This "field guide" will be off to the side of the main mission screen, and users can reference it when they're unsure.

[jonfroehlich]

Thanks @isavin12. The key question, to me, is where do we provide this info. We know that our users don't typically see or click on additional screens for more info. So, I think we have to train them in traditional flows like mission screens...

[jonfroehlich]

This guide by the Brazilian government (Portuguese) also has some nice graphics.

[jonfroehlich]

In our meeting with Katrina (@katrimana), Mikey, and me today, we discussed this.

Katrina asked if we've studied common labeling errors. We have. Here's our qualitative analysis of 432 errors (from our CHI'19 paper, see Page 10).

And, as Mikey and I said on the call, since that 2019 study, we think that the most common problems (drawing anecdotally on our experience is):

• Marking driveways as curb ramps
• Marking residential walkways as missing curb ramps
• Marking obstacles like poles and trees that are not actually impeding a path as obstacles (see street furniture diagram)
• Marking areas with no actual sidewalks as surface problems (these should be marked as 'no sidewalk')
• Probably other things... but you can examine behaviors yourself using Sidewalk Gallery

We also have a Google Doc where the team has compiled positive and negative examples of labels for obstacles, curb ramps, missing curb ramps, surface problems, no sidewalks

Mikey also shared in Slack all of the related Issues marked as data quality and user education.

I think educating users (as seamlessly as possible) as they engage in labeling is the ideal—I think we do this via nice illustrations like what I've shared above with maybe animated gifs—plus allowing users to understand when they've made mistakes (e.g., "why is my accuracy so low") and how to improve them. For the latter, see https://github.com/ProjectSidewalk/SidewalkWebpage/issues/2288 and https://github.com/ProjectSidewalk/SidewalkWebpage/issues/1914.

I think we have two primary opportunities for in-situ education:

• In the opening and closing mission screens (though these are infrequent)
• During the labeling activity itself (which should be our primary focus imo). How can we provide in situ information as a person selects a label and begins using it to help them better use the labels and evaluate the environment for walkability/accessibility

[jonfroehlich]

I've attached some feedback from Yochai's UIC undergrad class that used Project Sidewalk indicating that user education continues to be an important design focus for us.

UIC_Class_Feedback.docx

[jonfroehlich]

Here is another helpful annotated image about improvements to a sidewalk and curb ramp:

Source: http://www.albanystrollroll.org/curb-ramp-redesign-success/

[jonfroehlich]

And this pocket guide is really good: https://www.dot.state.pa.us/public/Bureaus/design/ADA/PocketGuide.pdf

I think we've previously shared it in our group.

As is this WA state guide: https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/publications/manuals/fulltext/m22-01/1510.pdf

And this guide: https://kp.uky.edu/knowledge-portal/articles/pedestrian-curb-ramps/