Universal Design of intuitive and accessible signage for all ; Conception universelle pour une signalétique intuitive et accessible à tous

This thesis was carried out as part of a CIFRE contract within Tactile Studio, a design agency specialized in the design of orientation maps and educational stations for museums and public institutions. Since 2009, the company has been developing a universal design approach to offer products that are accessible to everyone, especially visually impaired audiences. The aim of the thesis is, on the one hand, to provide a scientific validation of these practices and, on the other hand, to capitalize on the knowledge and know-how of the team. The analysis of literature and market products leads to a three-fold conclusion: 1) universal design is sometimes perceived as difficult to implement, even utopian; 2) the industry sees it as centered only on people with disabilities and therefore potentially unprofitable; 3) although the literature suggests that universal products also increase the performance of valid publics, this has not been demonstrated. We formalized a theoretical model of innovation called "the extraordinary user" and conducted three experiments applied to the products of Tactile Studio to demonstrate the applicability of universal design and its ability to benefit to the general public in terms of intuitiveness, performance and user experience. The first experiment focused on the orientation map of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, initially designed to meet the needs of blind and visually impaired people. In order to analyze the impact of this 3D map on the construction of mental representation of space for museum visitors, we compared its use with a classic 2D orientation map. 41 valid visitors participated. The results show that memorization of the details is better in 2D but identification of routes and representation of spaces are better with the 3D map. The second experiment consisted of a series of studies which involved a total of 427 participants (adults and children, with and without visual impairment), in order to design a range of universal visuotactile pictograms. The approach was based on: 1) ...