Which guiding information performs best in metro station: a side-by-side comparison based on an editable VR platform

To evaluate the effectiveness of various types of guiding information in metro stations, an experiment in a virtual reality (VR) environment was designed. Two hundred and twenty-four participants were recruited, and seven groups of VR experiments were conducted to make a side-by-side comparison between the guider, the sign (traditional and new designed), the subtitle, the video, the broadcast and non-player characters (NPCs). Four parameters, the perception rate (p), the comprehension time (c), the accuracy of path selection (s), and the hesitation time (h), were proposed, and the entropy weighting method was used to evaluate the performance quantitatively. Results showed the score of the new designed sign and the subtitle had the highest and lowest score, respectively. The broadcast and the guider outperformed the traditional sign and the video. NPCs generally had a negative impact on perception rate, accuracy of path selection and hesitation time, with mixed effects on comprehension time. Findings also indicated optimal sign placements: pattern-based signs should be positioned vertically, while color-based ones should align with movement direction. The proposed method provides a quantitative framework for comparing different types of guiding information, and the findings provide definitive reference on choosing the right directional cues for metro stations.