Vaishnavi Kancharla, Dual Degree student in Building Science Dual degree (BSD) supervised by Dr. Priyanka Srivastava presented a poster on Investigating the Design of the Running Man in Emergency Signage at the Cognitive Science Society (CSS-2023) conference in Sydney, Australia, from 26 – 29 July. Here is the summary of the research work as explained by the authors Vaishnavi Kancharla, Prudhvi Pulapa, Dr. Priyanka Srivastava and Dr. Raman Saxena:

Emergency signages are crucial for safe evacuations but have been challenged by inconsistent and ambiguous designs. We conducted two experiments to evaluate a specific emergency signage design, i.e., running man pictogram, in ease of conveying the direction to exit an unknown building. We compared the running man’s pictogram with traditional arrow signage in exp.1, and in exp. 2, we examined the key features that contribute to the running man’s composition. In both conditions, the participant’s task was to determine the running man’s/ arrow’s orientation and press the instructed corresponding keys. Our study revealed no statistically significant difference in the ability to identify the direction between the arrow and running man stimuli. Further, in exp. 2, the head/face component showed an advantage in identifying the running man’s orientation over the leg/hand. Results suggest running man alone in emergency signage may be risky, especially when it is incomplete without a head and face.

 Conference page: https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2023/

August 2023