When I was growing up, we had lots of these. None of the pedestrian buttons did anything (neither sped up the light nor made noise/indications for the blind). The result was that people learned to ignore them.
Fast forward to now, when the city is trying to become less car-centric, and new buttons are being put up that actually work (when you press them, the pedestrian lane becomes the next in line for the green light, and if you don't press it then it only very rarely or never gets green).
The result is people become agitated at the how slow the pedestrian lights go, because of course noone presses the button when they've been trained not to.
These kinds of design patterns will come back to bite you. Make things transparent and don't try to manipulate people like this.
That might be why people don't press the button near my work. I am always confused why there are people standing at the red traffic light of a rather small street without seeing any cars and without pressing the button, willing to wait for 10 minutes without realizing that they have missed something. Pressing that specific button at least results in 10 seconds waiting time if there is no car, and the light will never switch without the button.
Btw. do you really have traffic light buttons that don't do anything? Here in Berlin many automatic traffic lights have something that looks like a button but actually isn't one. Underneath is vibrating button that will show blind people that it's green without a sound. Many many people don't see that this is not a button, and don't think a moment about the blind sign (yellow ground, three black dots) on top of it and press it anyway, hoping it has an effect.
> Btw. do you really have traffic light buttons that don't do anything? Here in Berlin many automatic traffic lights have something that looks like a button but actually isn't one. Underneath is vibrating button that will show blind people that it's green without a sound. Many many people don't see that this is not a button, and don't think a moment about the blind sign (yellow ground, three black dots) on top of it and press it anyway, hoping it has an effect.
Yes, the old ones really did nothing. I just can't understand why they were put there. I tried pressing (and holding) them a few times, they had no vibration or anything like that. They've started removing them as the new, functional ones are installed, but it's hard to change people's habits.
The new ones both affect the traffic light timing and emit an audible signal for the blind.
Wtf? This kind of programmed helplessness deserves some studying too. I generally wait ~60 seconds or one light cycle, after which I ignore the broken light and proceed on my own. Traffic lights are there to mediate between people, not exert iron-clad control over them.
The number of over thinkers who have been trained to never press a crosswalk button, and don't think to press it when they are waiting a long time, is vanishingly small and not worth he investment in maintaining signage to report the current programming of the button.
What you call "over thinkers", I call normal people. We are pattern matching machines. One must be pretty dim to not notice a pattern crossing the same street every day for years.
Your unsupported dismissal aside, clearly this is not a "vanishingly small" group. I mention this because the majority of pedestrians do not seem use the buttons. Those that do use them are mostly tourists.
I have no idea where you are going with your talk about signage. I don't expect a printed-out flowchart or ladder diagram at every intersection. But not putting up nonfunctional switches seems a small thing to ask, especially given the problems that result, as described in my post.
Fast forward to now, when the city is trying to become less car-centric, and new buttons are being put up that actually work (when you press them, the pedestrian lane becomes the next in line for the green light, and if you don't press it then it only very rarely or never gets green).
The result is people become agitated at the how slow the pedestrian lights go, because of course noone presses the button when they've been trained not to.
These kinds of design patterns will come back to bite you. Make things transparent and don't try to manipulate people like this.