Int Seminar 2: The Design Reflection on The Subway Entrance/Exit of New York City

Since subway has become the most common and important transportation tool of people who live in New York City through the centuries, improving the whole subway system would be put on the top list of NYC reconstruction. Even though the whole project is profound and difficult, but the designers can still break it apart and starts from the details. It is very direct to start with the subway entrance and exit where all the passengers accesses to the platforms. Before redesigning the entrance/exit, the designer should start his own research based on the interview with the passengers and personal experimenting. The number of the passengers is tremendous, hence, the sampling survey should be taken in this section.With the random selection, the designer would hear the legitimate voice from the public. Second, by experimenting himself, the designer would have a more accurate thought instead of pure imagination.

After the several rounds of researches and experiences, the designer would find out some unreasonable parts of the subway turnstile. Firstly, the entrances and exits of the subways are sharing the same turnstiles which induces the congestion specially during the rush hour. Secondly, the passengers might be deferred from their schedule because of the insensitive swipers located upon the turnstiles.  Last but not least, the turnstiles are always annoying. It’s specially inconvenient for people who carry bunch stuff, and the turns would easily hurt people’s thigh. As every one knows, People in New York City are alway very rush and inpatient, all the tiny mistakes might ruin their whole day life. Solving these problems is not whimsical but time consuming. Separating the entrances and the exits, switching the swiping system to touching board and changing the form of the entrances’ gates instead of turnstile can all be applied to the redesign of the program. However, NYC Subway system involves  more than 450 stations, applying the changes to the whole system would definitely take a lot of times.

The research and design process that designer has applied for the subway entrance redesign is very similar to the process of my Trench town Fake Product design from last semester’s integrative studio course. After my instructor assigned my group with the them of 1970’s Trenchtown Jamaica, we aimed to create a series of products that intended to help the local inhabitants to protect themselves from the political tensions. We watched the interviews that was being held by the previous film production since it was not possible for us to interview those local citizens at this time. The interviews restores the vivid circumstance of those citizens during 1970s. Based on the understanding of the local condition, we then put ourselves in the scene and imaged the condition for assuming the needs. After the experiment and discussion, we found out the most serious issue of Trenchtown was religious issue. We finally designed four products for the citizens to cover their life habits under the religious restriction.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *