There were no major differences between locations, and the escalator ride was typically described as being “normal” or “typical”, and in general quite good or comfortable. An exception was for location 4, where the escalators were de-scribed as loud and noisy. For location 1 the overall key words were “fluent, pleasant, normal”. For location 2 the overall key words were “good, easy, tradi-tional”. For location 3 the overall key words were “calm, normal, comfortable”.
For location 4 the overall key words were “noisy, slow, ordinary”. For location 5 the overall key words were “comfortable, normal, safe”. All open-ended question
results and the analysed key words are listed in Appendix 4 “Open-ended ques-tions”.
In general, at all of the locations the escalators were used properly and the people riding the escalators seemed calm and relaxed, even if at some locations there were quite a lot people using the escalators. At the first location, the back-ground music and other noises coming from the announcements and advertise-ments were quite loud. Overall, the escalators seemed to be tidy and in normal condition. An exception was for the fourth location, where the escalators were especially noisy according to the participants’ comments and the researcher ob-servations. At the fourth location, the background music and other ambient sounds were considerably quiet. The entry and exit areas seemed quite spacious at all locations, and even though while riding on the escalators it seemed slightly dim at some of the locations and the escalators themselves were not lit, the visi-bility to the surrounding areas when entering and exiting seemed good and bright enough. This was especially at the locations where there were lots of nat-ural light available.
The speed of escalators at each location seemed appropriate, although the longer the escalators were, the slower the escalator speed seemed. There were no noticeably disturbing step vibrations or jerks, and the handrail was moving quite smoothly at each location. The escalators seemed a bit steep at locations four and five. The escalators were easy to find, they were located quite centrally and were close to the main lobbies. They were also quite close to the outdoors. However, there were no elevators too near to the escalators. Full research notes from the observations are in Appendix 5 “Observations”.
Open-ended questions and observations are concluded in table 5 which is in Appendix 6 “Main conclusions of the spatial-contextual analysis”. It includes main findings from both the open-ended questions and the observations listed by each location.
5 DISCUSSION
A feeling of comfort can be seen as an example of a mentally experienced phe-nomenon. Research on human experience is without a doubt a complex and chal-lenging task. In order to grasp the phenomenal conscious experience that emerges in an escalator passenger’s mind, and how it can be researched, we first have to understand the underlying factors that may affect this emerging mental event.
When a human receives physical stimuli from the external world, they are transposed into biological sensory data, which is then further processed in a per-son’s mind. The sensory data can be perceived as sensations. This is what psy-chophysics investigates – the psychological features of a sensation that relates to the physical properties of its stimulus (Mather, 2009; Fastl & Zwicker, 2007;
Moore, 2014). These sensational features can be used as the basis of research on the experience of escalator ride comfort. However, fields in human science such as psychology and cognitive science have proposed that the sensory information is just one part of the “puzzle” in conscious experience.
Experiences are born as a result of mental processing that includes several different components. Components vary from human personality and culture, to cognitive aspects such as memories, learning, emotions, schemas, apperceptions and affordances. They also include goals and expectations, judgements and ac-tions, sensorimotor skills, and so on. At the core is: the mental representation of the phenomenon; the information content of thought, and intentionality; “the di-rectness of actions” (Saariluoma & Oulasvirta, 2010, p. 320); and the expected ef-fects of those executed actions. Also, what is emphasised in the cognitive science, in the science where humans (and other biological or non-biological organisms, which are capable of computations) are seen as information processing organ-isms, is that human behaviour is driven by sets of needs and goal directed inten-tions. Humans are action-oriented and their phenomenal experiences are born as a result of interaction with the external physical world and the internal mental world (Saariluoma, 2004; Saariluoma & Oulasvirta, 2010; Hartson & Pyla, 2012;
Revonsuo, 2010; Allen & Williams, 2011; Edelman & Fekete, 2012; O'Callaghan 2012; Dale et al., 2012).
In this research the approach is heterophenomenological. It includes the first-person introspection and self-reporting, typically used in phenomenology, plus the third-person analysis by the researcher. Heterophenomenological ap-proach allows for the combination of qualitative and quantitative research meth-ods, such as observations and survey questionnaires. It also makes it possible to conclude the results from analysing the both.