A Public Design Methodology for Contemplative Mobility Experience in Urban Rail Transfer Spaces through the Re-signification of Low-Resolution Media : A Concept-Integrative Framework of Soft Fascination, Healing Efficacy, and Experiential Publicness

Abstract

This study departs from the premise that high-arousal visual environments in urban rail transfer spaces overconsume users' attentional resources and working memory, thereby experientially undermining experiential publicness at the level of lived experience. It further re-signifies low-resolution media not as a degradation of image quality, but as a public design grammar that structures a theoretical pathway through which extraneous cognitive load can be relatively reduced by moderating information density and rate of change. Within the proposed conceptual hierarchy, soft fascination is positioned as a cognitive mediating mechanism that mitigates directed attention fatigue, healing efficacy as its resultant intermediate effect, and contemplative mobility experience as the overarching design goal. Drawing on a scoping review that integrates four theory clusters — publicness, environmental psychology, cognitive load, and attention restoration — the study proposes a concept-integrative public design methodology combining a non-ad zone governance premise, a soft-fascination apex principle system, and a CVSS-short-based pre-implementation evaluation frame, thereby structuring the enabling conditions under which contemplative mobility experience may occur. Rather than empirically validating causal effects, this paper functions as a methodology proposal, providing an intermediate design-to-evaluation bridge intended to inform subsequent field experiments and governance-based implementation.