Joohwan Park

Suggesting a Pedestrian Experience Framework for the Mobility Handicapped

The purpose of this study is to develop pedestrian experience framework and its’ applicability to gather experiences of the mobility handicapped. Thanks to an increasing attention to a pedestrian-friendly walking environment, ‘walkability’ has gained interests of the researchers in various fields. Studies on walkability conducted so far, however, focused mainly on the ease and safety of walking. Considering that people’s usage of the pedestrian environment is not limited to ‘walking’ purposes only, it is difficult to reflect what pedestrians are actually experiencing within the concept of walkability. Pedestrian Experience (PX) is a concept that expands the walkability to include a wider spectrum of what the pedestrians are experiencing in their everyday lives. Special efforts are needed for the mobility handicapped, who are more likely to face discomforts than others do during walking. In order to identify the PX framework, which consists of PX principle, pedestrian environment, and walking characteristics, more than 250 previous studies were collected and analyzed. To refine the resulting framework, we then conducted an in-depth interview with the social service workers who are taking care of the mobility handicapped as well as an experience sampling method to collect the specific episodes experienced by the mobility handicapped. As a case study, we invited six different groups of people with similar mobility problems and conducted focus group interview – hard of hearing, deaf, partially sighted, blind, crutches or stick users, and wheelchair users, respectively. The PX framework suggested in this study can be used as the reference criteria for designing and evaluating the pedestrian-friendliness of our walking environment.