Designing for crowd well-being: Needs and design suggestions

Designing for crowd well-being: Needs and design suggestions

Li, J.
De Ridder, H.
Vermeeren, A.P.O.S.
Conrado, C.
Martella, C.

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2013-05-20

This paper investigates the needs or criteria for sustaining well-being in crowded situations through two focus group discussions with a total of ten participants. We conclude that pursuing crowd well-being could be divided into two different cases: one is obtaining the enhancement of the current state in normal situations, and the other is avoiding the deficiencies in case of emergencies. The psychological needs are different in these two cases. Crowd members pay attention to higher level of psychological needs, i.e. staying autonomic, connected, competent and respected in the former situation, while their focus will immediately change to low level needs, i.e. safety and security issues, when unexpected things happen. These findings are consistent with Sheldon et al.’s new hierarchy of needs. We also find that all the crowd types mentioned in the focus group discussions could be classified into two categories, namely event crowds and non-event crowds. A crowd can also consist of both event moments (e.g. watching performances or dancing with the crowds) and non-event moments (e.g. waiting in queues). The event crowds are looking for enhancement of their experiences in the crowds, whose needs are usually higher level, whereas the non-event crowds usually cannot help joining the crowds in order to achieve their goals. The event moments when the higher level needs is fulfilled are usually associated with positive moments. The non-event moments when only security is promised and have no support on higher level needs are usually associated with negative moments. To get insights into how crowd well-being is currently fulfilled by crowd management strategies and designs, we investigated a number of influential crowd management literatures. The results reveal that emphasis is placed on supporting the safety. Most strategies focus on preparation and prediction instead sustaining real-time crowd well-being. Most of the designs tend to be coercive instead of respecting the autonomy. In conclusion, designing for crowd well-being could change towards the real-time and aim at fulfilling the higher needs, i.e. autonomy, competence, self-esteem and relatedness on the premise of security.

human-centered design
crowd well-being
hierarchy of needs
crowd types

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8fae0d69-aa2a-4dc9-ac87-8aec81be5d69

National Cheng Kung University

Creative Design for Smart Living; 7th International Conference on Planning and Design, Tainan, Taiwan, 20-24 May 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 The Authors