A path worn by the natural walking pattern preference of people in a certain area off of the designated path or sidewalk, most often in order to form a shortcut between one point to another.
Example from Universal Principles of Design: Worn Pathway off Sidewalk (pg. 77)
Example from an Online Source: Cycling Path Desire Line, a path worn down into the grass from cyclists and pedestrains cutting the corner and walking across the grassy area, wearing it away.
Example from Real Life: Golf Cart tracks through the grass rather than going the long way and staying on the designated path.
Nice choice of strategy Mia. I am curious how you would apply this concept in design yourself. I haven’t explored this strategy specifically but I do feel like we instinctively do it. Mathematically speaking, we always want to find the shortest path between two points, however, due to low visibility, we often tend to follow the shortest path between two visible points instead. I feel that there is plenty of opportunities to use this strategy for sports. Here is an example for basketball: http://getskillzbasketball.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/photo1.jpg
Hi Shilpa,
That’s a great example as well, I would have never thought about applying this concept to sports if you hadn’t brought that up! For me, I think about applying it in the design of a space; I had watched a film called Kitchen Stories which was about the Swedish pursuit for an ergonomically designed kitchen, and I feel that this strategy would be great applied there as well when designing a space. It’s interesting to see how many unexpected ways that concepts can be applied!
I agree!