Designing Seat Plans for Accessible Public Events

Topic Description

Spectating sporting events or concerts may come with additional challenges for disabled people. Non-disabled people can typically buy their tickets online by selecting their preferred seats from a plan of the stadium, while disabled people may need more contextual information on their seats. This may be the distance to the next accessible restroom, the existence of stairs on the path to the seat, how loud it can get, or even how large the seat is. In this thesis, based on recent research, we want to develop designs for such improved seat plans and evaluate the prototypes.
The prototypes will be developed based on criteria from related work. Depending on the type of thesis, the prototypes do (not) need to be functional. For B.Sc. students, the focus lies on the visualisation of accessibility barriers and facilitators in the design (e.g., using tools such as Figma). Then, in a survey, the designs as well as further requirements will be evaluated. M.Sc. students need to develop a functional web-based interface that implements a booking system for a smaller venue. The prototype will be evaluated together with different stakeholders, for instance, in focus groups.

Task Summary

1. Related Work: Acquiring a basic understanding of accessibility in public venues and the provision of accessibility information online.
2. Prototype Design: Develop a (non-)functional prototype of a seat plan of a chosen public venue based on criteria from related work.
3. Evaluation: Develop a survey (B.Sc.) to evaluate the design and requirements of novel interactive seat plans, or conduct a qualitative evaluation study (M.Sc.) with key stakeholders.

Skills

Required:  Human-computer Interaction, Accessibility
Beneficial:  User Studies, Design, FIGMA, Web development

Contact

Lukas Strobel