Going in the right direction…

Posted on Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Last week when I was in Düsseldorf I wanted to go from Golzheimer Platz to Nordpark /Aquazoo.  Aparently an easy task for a savvy city rat like myself. After living in some many countries with very different subway systems, I was expecting to simply follow the map and get there. However this is what I encountered:

At a first glance I thought to myself “this is the wrong train”. To my surprise it was indeed the right one. In case you are wondering what’s wrong with this picture, I would ask you to look at it again.

Our sense of direction uses as a reference the direction where the train is moving towards to. This is what we translate in our mind as “moving forward”. It’s what is in front of us…

According to this sign I am moving in the opposite direction of my final destination:

At the station, I would expect the sign to be in accordance to the direction the train is moving to. At the same time, the stations that we already passed should be indeed marked in gray to indicate that we left them behind.

Someone tried to explain to me that “Westerners” read from left to right and that is the reason the map indicates the stations this way… Fair enough, but my argument is it that it confuses your sense of direction instead of enhancing it. A sense of direction is super important for these type transportation systems. This map is sadly conceived from a pure rational perspective.

So here is my illustrated example of the way it should be:

Maybe I am wrong… What do you think?