Putting the Eye in Transit: The Research Behind SEPTA’s New Wayfinding System

With support from Penn’s Center for Safe Mobility, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is redesigning the signage for its “Rail Transit” (or “Metro”) network, which includes the Market-Frankford Line, Broad Street Line, Norristown High Speed Line, and Trolleys. The goal of the project is to make SEPTA accessible for all users, regardless of ability, language, or level of familiarity. The “SEPTA Metro” recommendations were based on 18 months of research and public outreach, which the Weitzman School of Design supported. To gain valuable insight into how different users navigate the SEPTA system, Penn researchers shadowed volunteers wearing Tobii Pro eye-tracker glasses, which record what they are looking at and for how long, as they navigated different stations of SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line, and then mapped the volunteers' movements. Volunteers included a diverse range of participants, including brand new users, lifetime SEPTA customers, non-English speakers, and people with disabilities.

In this panel discussion, presented by the Weitzman School of Design at Penn as part of DesignPhiladelphia, Megan Ryerson and Camille Boggan from Penn’s Center for Safe Mobility, are joined by SEPTA’s Lex Powers, who is directing the wayfinding redesign, and Leslie Richards, SEPTA’s general manager/chief executive officer, to talk about the project.

Speakers: Leslie Richards (MRP’93), General Manager/Chief Executive Officer, SEPTA, Lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning, Penn; Megan Ryerson, UPS Chair of Transportation and Associate Dean for Research, Penn; Lex Powers (MCP‘15), Strategic Planning Manager, SEPTA; Camille Boggan (MCP‘21), Research Assistant, Center for Safe Mobility, Penn

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu to let us know what you need. Please note, we require at least 48 hours’ notice. If you register within 48 hours of this event, we won’t be able to secure the appropriate accommodations.