EDIT someone merged my threads.
I have discovered some TfL pdfs documenting the development of the amber pedestrian crossing countdown units (used on 'dumb' fixed time crossings) in London:
it seems the Dft rejected the suggestion of a graphical indication of time remaining in favour of literal digital seconds:
this seems slightly weird to me (in a UI sense):
surely showing seconds left suggests arriving Pedestrians doing maths to decide between the 3 or 4 notional ideas I expect them to hold when deciding if there is still time for them to cross in time:
1) near start of blackout countdown = plenty of time to cross at a reasonable walking speed
2) enough time for slightly faster speed walkers to start crossing(I suppose this state could be subdivided into two)
3) Best not to start crossing unless you are flash the superhero
but time to finish crossing
(I expect very slow persons would only start on the green man)
So that could be a discrete / quantised 3 bar display eg
= =_
or some sort of more analogue indication etc etc
Does anyone know their reasoning?
NB discussion of whether countdown as implemented is a good or bad idea belongs in another thread
(although I do think some sort of positive indication of longer 'blackout period's is a good thing as it avoids signals looking broken (NB they rejected a (flashing) amber figure))