Side Effects of Considerate Behavior - The Act of Scooting Over on Seats +

　It seems there are unfortunately many stories about how when kindness gathers, it can turn into a nuisance'. Especially for those 'unaccustomed' people who have started a lifestyle of riding public transportation🚋 in the new fiscal year this spring! Even if not, this is a noteworthy👀 article raising an issue📖.

　《Kindness ⇒ Nuisance》 --- In other words, there are cases where feelings take the lead and end up 'spinning their wheels'😞. While this is generally noticeable regarding macro-level trends in society, this time I would like to present a familiar and simple case on an individual basis.

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　This is about seats on a train. Please imagine the common configuration where people sit facing each other from the back to both sides near the windows.
　In recent years, many types have had the 'standard' width for one person clearly defined, but let's talk about the traditional 'long seats for 5 or more people without boundaries'.

　I will skip the psychological tendency of 'the first person to arrive sits at the end' to 'the next person sits near the center within the range of available space' as it is not the main point here, but the focus/premise here is, due to the psychological influence of 'personal space', sitting with 'room to spare', at the stage after the seats are generally filled, is where it's at.

Could you predict what happens next?

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　Once the seats are full, people start standing by the doors, and people also start standing facing the seated passengers. It's like the image of standing and holding onto a strap facing the window.

　For those sitting in the flow described above, this confrontational situation is 'awkward', and a psychological behavior tends to occur where they try to release the instability of their comfort and the reason they have 'kindness'.

　In other words, there is often a scene where people close the gap with the person next to them / 'scoot over' little by little. While each individual's [hip width], [shoulder width], and [elbow width] remain occupied wider than the aforementioned 'standard' values, based on the spirit of 'sharing seats...', it is a movement to close [the visible gap 'somehow']. You have probably all done this too🤔.

　But this behavior,

what is the likelihood that the resulting utility
will be high?

　To state the conclusion, I do not recommend it🙅

Let's assume there are currently 5 or 6 people sitting in a row.
◆ The person at the end does not move.
◆ When the second person from the end does this, they shift toward the end by about 0.1 person's width.
◆ People left near the center of the long seat can also be drawn into shifting to one side.
--- As a result, a space large enough for a new person to sit is not created. It's more like 0.5 to 0.7 of a person's width.

If you were standing and encountered such a situation, are you the type to plop yourself into that narrow space?
⇒ It seems that quite a few people have a tendency to choose "not to sit." Following that logic, the person near the center of the seat, who ultimately couldn't clear a full seat's worth of space, ends up looking like they are occupying more than 1.5 people's worth of space.

Now, what happens next ➡
◆ Thinking "it's not wide enough, so I don't want to force myself to sit," you end up standing at the position closest to the spot that was "made available for you" .
◆ A sense of "It's open, so just sit down" drifts from some of the people around.
◆ The "person who happened to be standing at the nearest position" feels uncomfortable.
--- As a result, even more people who were secondarily involved have been affected. It's "collateral damage" 😞

Even as we follow the overall explanation like this, it is still easy to feel resentment, thinking, "I moved out of kindness, are you going to speak ill of that!?" Perhaps you feel the same way.

However, if you think about the essence of the matter, if each person who sat down early (especially in times when we aren't conscious of social distance) had sat down without creating a "0.2 to 0.3 person margin" from the start, this situation would not have happened.
☞ That said, this does not mean going as far as "close contact" 🙅🏻‍♂️. Not spreading your elbows to operate your smartphone and bumping into the person next to you 🚫 is a requirement that should be thoroughly maintained.

In terms of priority, what is welcomed is,

I think that is the case, but what do you think? 🙄

(It is difficult to describe the situation in writing) I wrote at length, but it was a very basic story ☝, wasn't it...

#DesignThinking #Essence #Rationalization #BusinessImprovement #Design #Column #TriedRaisingQOL #Habits #DailyNote #Ingenuity #Transportation #Train #Seat #ConsiderateBehavior #SideEffects #MakingRoom #CollateralDamage