Inspeção de conformidade quadrietapas para a avaliação do design de sistemas de sinalização implantados.

Abstract

Signaling helps individuals to move around efficiently, indicates them the right path and what services can be found in an environment, as well as alerts for possible risks or how to safely leave an emergency location. Despite this importance, there was a lack of models to evaluate the quality of signaling systems, before, during and after their implementation in the environment. This methodological proposal derives from the first research approach present in the multi-method approach conceived by Queiroz (2001), initially focused on the evaluation of desktop software interfaces, that interestingly have similarity with signaling systems. Both depend on the ability to interpret the information present in the interface so that the user can navigate in the physical or virtual environment and, from there, make decisions to find the destination they want to access. Thus, the objective of this research is to propose a systematic alternative, aimed at the evaluation of a signaling system, implanted in a higher education institution. Due to the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the original methodology was reformulated to allow the evaluation of the signaling system selected as a case study without the participation of test users. The research consists of a mixed approach, with exploratory objectives and procedures based on a case study. The evaluation process focuses on the on-site inspection of the signaling system, by means of a set of design guidelines, have been structured in four stages: 1) Inspection of the signaling system in the light of the Brazilian Technical Standard ABNT NBR 9050 (2015) recommendations; 2) Inspection of the signaling functions; 3) Analysis of the diagramming of the selected system; and 4) Verification of architectural components. In turn, the last three stages were based on recommendations extracted

from Galitz (2007), Gibson (2009), Schlatter and Levinson (2013), Calori and Vanden- Eynden (2015), and Gabriele et al. (2018). At the end of the document, the proposed

method for converting the qualitative data obtained during the inspection process into quantitative percentages is presented, in order to provide a qualitative and quantitative diagnosis of design flaws found in the implemented signaling system, considered in the case study.