Two comparisons on a museum route
1This is an invented learning example, not a report of an actual study. A museum club wanted to understand why visitors sometimes took a long time to complete a route. It compared two kinds of signs in one trial and preparation before walking in another trial. The route had the same number of stops in both trials. The following three blocks have been placed out of order.
2(A) In other words, once the information on the signs was held constant, preparing a route before walking still made a difference. The faster group did not receive a new map or brighter signs. Its members used the same information to plan their movements. This result suggests a role for preparation in this particular task, rather than proving that every kind of planning always saves time.
3(B) In addition, the club ran a second trial in which everyone followed identical coloured signs. Half the participants studied the route before starting, while the others began walking immediately. The planning group finished in an average of eight minutes; the immediate-start group took eleven. This comparison concerned preparation, not the difference between coloured signs and plain text signs.
4(C) In the first trial, one group followed coloured signs and another followed plain text signs. Neither group was given time to plan the route beforehand. The coloured-sign group completed the route in ten minutes on average, compared with fourteen minutes for the text-sign group. The club therefore had an initial result about how the format of guidance related to completion time.