Evaluating Impacts of Bus Route Map Design and Dynamic Real-Time Information Presentation on Bus Route Map Search Efficiency and Cognitive Load

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of different design methods of bus route maps and dynamic real-time information on the bus route map search efficiency and cognitive load. A total of 32 participants were tested through an experiment of destination bus route searching, and the NASA-TLX scale was used to measure their cognitive load. Two route map schemes were designed according to the research purposes and application status. One was a collinear bus route map with geographic location information based on a realistic map, the other was a highly symmetric straight-line collinear bus route map without map information, and two different types of dynamic real-time information reminder methods were designed (the dynamic flashing of the number of the bus entering the stop, and the dynamic animated flash of the route of the bus entering the stop). Then, four different combinations of the bus route maps were used for testing through the search task of bus routes available for bus destinations. The results indicated no significant difference in the search efficiency between the map-based bus route map and the linear bus route map, but the cognitive load of the map-based bus route map was higher than that of the linear route map. In the presentation of dynamic real-time information, neither the search performance nor the cognitive load of the dynamic flashing of the route of the bus entering the stop was as good as those of the flashing of the number only of the bus entering the stop. In addition, it was found that, compared with men, the cognitive load for women was more affected by geographic information. The optimization strategies of the bus route map information design were proposed by the comprehensive consideration of the feedback of route maps and real-time information.