THE IMPROVING MOTORWAY REST AREA BASED ON VISUAL SEARCH OF ELDERLY PERSONS

The purpose of this study is to seek concrete solutions for improving motorway rest areas “MRA” through wayfinding legibility from the viewpoint of universal design concept with an emphasis on visual search characteristics of elderly persons. Results and conclusions are as follows. 1) The experiment was shown that elderly persons found it the most difficult to find a way back to their vehicles among four routes. 2) Elderly persons tend to look down below for visual search, namely road surfaces and building floors. 3) Elderly persons found it difficult to make a quick identification of proper signs that help them find the direction. 4) Three major strategy factors of elderly persons extracted; a) Prior knowledge of target destination, b) Target destination location, and c) Judgment basis for target destination location. 5) Under an environment where the information is easily recognizable thanks to clearly identified target, the most significant factor was "Judgment basis for target location". 6) Under an environment where the information is not recognizable with ease, due to temporary installation of the signs or unclear identification of the target destination, "Prior knowledge of target destination" was of the most importance.