Book Review / What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn

Shonna Trinch and Edward Snajdr decipher signage in a way that will prevent you from looking at a sign in the same manner again. Their research is built on a series of site visits, observations, and ethnographic interviews and they posit that signage plays an important role in gentrification. As they explain it, signs effect public space; well designed and interesting signs are important attributes of placemaking, often part of a strategy for cities to reclaim their appeal.

Location, Location, Location

Academic scholars and practitioners uniformly suggest that off-premise signs such as billboards will be more effective if they are installed in high-traffic areas rather than low-traffic areas. In this research, we question the ubiquity of this claim and illustrate potential advantages of installing off-premise signs in low-traffic areas given that these environments also tend to be less cluttered (i.e., having fewer competing signs). Across two studies, we provide converging evidence that consumers evaluate a billboard more favorably when it is displayed by itself than when it is displayed next to other billboards. We show that the same billboard in a low-clutter (vs. high-clutter) location is judged to be more aesthetic, which in turn improves the overall evaluation of the billboard. We further delineate boundary conditions in which the benefits of a low-clutter environment are attenuated.

Three-Dimensional Gaze Projection Heat-Mapping of Outdoor Mobile Eye-Tracking Data

The mobilization of eye-tracking for use outside of the laboratory provides new opportunities for the assessment of pedestrian visual engagement with their surroundings. However, the development of data representation techniques that visualize the dynamics of pedestrian gaze distribution upon the environment they are situated within remains limited. The current study addresses this through highlighting how mobile eye-tracking data, which captures where pedestrian gaze is focused upon buildings along urban street edges, can be mapped as three-dimensional gaze projection heat-maps. This data processing and visualization technique is assessed during the current study along with future opportunities and associated challenges discussed.

Do You See What I See?

This article reports on the shopping experiences of people with visual impairment (n = 7) and offers an alternative way to understand their needs. Our study adopted taskscape theory and multiple-method ethnographic perspectives to obtain viewpoints of shoppers with visual impairment and examined shopping activities through two lenses (wayfinding and signage) to determine criteria for improved design. We used taskscape theory to gain insights into how this population perceives signage as well as a participatory, human ecological, systems approach to identify the complexity of wayfinding among people with visual impairment. We used observation, notetaking, photography, and interviews to gain insights into personal and social factors affecting participants’ experiences when navigating in shopping malls. Our data-driven results include a characterization of seven activities—pre-shopping, traveling to the mall, mall navigation, in-store navigation, merchandise evaluation, checkout, and post-shopping—within the shopping taskscape of shoppers with visual impairments that help assess user needs regarding signage and wayfinding. The shopping taskscape provides a systems approach to advance ideas around designing complex environments for able-bodied people and those with disability.

Introduction

This issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding presents a range of work truly reflecting both this journal’s interdisciplinarity and its attention to both signage and wayfinding research. The title of this issue, Signage Perceptions, Experiences, and Aesthetic Judgements, reflects the range of scholarship included, but also highlights the complex nature of the multiple factors influencing the effectiveness of signage as an essential means of visual communication. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the interrelated factors of regulation, design, and display context, taken together, will impact viewer perceptions and judgments about the messages on signs, and may lead to different viewer behavior entirely apart from the actual text used. Ultimately, the matters explored in this issue have important implications for commerce and wayfinding, as would be expected of explorations of signage effectiveness, but also connect with the range of related quality of life issues which underscore the importance of signage and wayfinding research in a broader societal context.

Perceptions of On-Premise Commercial Sign Regulation Codes for Beauty, Interest, and Order by Designers and Non-Designers

Regulation has long since guided urban growth, and it is essential for municipalities to construct regulation that is conducive to creating visually stimulating public spaces. Minimal scientific research has been conducted on the impacts of commercial signage and the varying arrangements created by different sign regulations in regard to perception (Jourdan, Hurd, & Hawkins, 2013; Portella, 2014). With the rise of public involvement in planning (Lane, 2005; Sanoff, 2000), it is essential that designers and non-designers coordinate to develop sign controls that contribute to urban growth. This research studies the differences and similarities in perceptions of planning and design professionals and non-designers to aid in the development of future, more positively perceived, signage regulation. By using visual models presented in the form of a survey, findings show both similarities and differences between these groups in their assessment of signscapes regarding communication, perceptions of characteristics like beauty, interest, and order, an overall preference toward highly structured codes, and a difference in harshness of evaluation.

Effects of Time for Deliberation and Disfluency on Omission Neglect

The use of disfluency in marketing signage has more complex effects than what past research suggests. Time plays an important role in consumer information processing of signage presented disfluently. Three experimental studies suggest that the effects of disfluency on the awareness of missing information, purchase likelihood, and likelihood of future surprise depend on whether consumers have more or less time to process the information. When they have a limited amount of time, disfluency improves their awareness of missing information, leading to not only a lower likelihood of immediate purchase but also less surprise when important omissions are revealed later. Nevertheless, the effects are attenuated when consumers have a greater amount of time.

Introduction

Our newest issue of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding focuses on communication effectiveness at the intersection of consumers’ perception and their experience. This special issue features work from marketing and communication scholars who explore the visual characteristics of signage as they influence evaluations, purchase intentions, detection of omission, and compliance. Given the timing of this issue, it is not surprising that the COVID-19 pandemic provided a highly relevant context in which to study consumers’ perception of visual information. As such, two of the articles presented discuss signage within the context of the global pandemic specifically. Other articles present important research on topics related to sign complexity and consumer perceptiveness.

A Sign of Trust? The value of source attribution in accolade claims

Organizations that have received an accolade or honor often share this information with current or prospective customers, either in a digital (i.e., on their website, social media, etc.) or physical (i.e., on-premise signs, outdoor signs, etc.) format. When publicizing their achievement, marketers must make decisions related to source attribution—that is, how much detail to provide and how prominently (if at all) to mention the thirdparty entity that bestowed the accolade upon them. This is an important question, particularly with respect to physical signs where informational complexity is often detrimental and visual clarity is paramount. In this research, I examine whether source attribution in signage materially affects consumer evaluations and behavioral intentions. Across three studies, I find converging evidence that source attribution in accolade claims does in fact bolster evaluations and behavioral intentions, even in the context of physical signage when consumers are likely to be engaged in heuristic processing. Furthermore, I provide evidence that these more positive judgments arise because attribution increases perceived credibility of the organization receiving the accolade.

Simple or complex? Consumer response to display signs

Retail signage provides information from the marketer to facilitate product purchase. An increase in sign information creates greater sign complexity, which raises the question: for consumer product choices, what quantity of information is helpful versus overwhelming? We hypothesize that consumers would allocate more visual attention to complex signs and that sign complexity would be a predictor of likeliness to buy (LTB). Five experts rated 105 real garden center signs for complexity and five low, moderate, and highcomplexity signs were selected for the study. Signs were incorporated into Tobii X1 Light Eye Tracker software, where 85 non-student subjects rated sign attractiveness and LTB from a display containing that sign. Subjects allocated greater visual attention (higher fixation count and longer total fixation duration) to more complex signs, which were also rated as most attractive. Initial regression results showed sign attractiveness and fixation count were positive predictors of LTB, while complexity and total fixation duration were inversely related to LTB. Mediation analysis showed that fixation duration fully mediates fixation count impact on purchase intention. Results suggest that informationrich messaging in high complexity signs, while seen as attractive, may give consumers too much information and higher cognitive load, which makes decision-making more difficult.