Wayfinding in Interior Environments: An Integrative Review

Abstract

Wayfinding is an issue in complex facilities-including hospitals, airports, and office buildings-and wayfinding difficulties are associated with negative psychological and physiological consequences. In addition, since finding one's way in a building is a prerequisite for successfully using that building, wayfinding has attracted the attention of scholars and decision makers. The goal of this article is to review and synthesize the published literature on wayfinding in interior environments. A systematic search was conducted of four databases: PsychINFO, JSTOR, ProQuest, and EBSCO. A hand search was also conducted. From the initial harvest of 804 records, a total of 84 records met the inclusion criteria for full review. After several rounds of review, four broad domains were identified: (1) wayfinding cognition, (2) wayfinding behavior, (3) individual and group differences, and (4) environmental factors. These domains are used as a framework to organize the findings, and the review shows that the sub-domains most thoroughly addressed in the literature are spatial memories, floor plan configuration, landmarks, signs, and maps. This review can deepen the field's understanding of factors that contribute to interior wayfinding and can serve as a resource for decision makers and designers.

The principles of pedestrian route choice

“…Research has identified several heuristics pedestrians may use to make route choices ( table 1 and see [ 69 ] for a review). One type of heuristic can be described as one-reason heuristics that assume pedestrians only use one cue (principle, rule, criteria or strategy) to compare alternatives for decision making and focus on the characteristic of the route.…”

A Design for Wayfinding: Developing a Mobile Application to Enhance Spatial Orientation at Taipei Metro

“…The authors of [16], by examining the case of two metro stations in Brussels, specified that the main reasons are the absence of direct sunlight and the lack of recognizable spatial features, while the authors of [17] studied the case of Hong Kong, pointing out that most passengers lose their orientation during the vertical travel between different levels. The most common way to minimize the negative influence discussed above is to install directional signs and maps to help the passengers understand their orientation [18]. Nevertheless, to search for directional guidance itself may be a difficult wayfinding task, especially for the passengers with deficits in either mobility or spatial memory.…”

A bibliometric analysis of published literature on healthcare facilities' wayfinding research from 1974 to 2020

“…Jamshidi et al explored the complex factors of wayfinding in indoor environments through a review and emphasized that wayfinding involves human cognitive processes and behaviors. The review study identified two factors that influence wayfinding: (a) user factors and (b) environmental factors (Jamshidi et al, 2020). To explore the extent to which knowledge of the wayfinding domain is established and related concepts, the following section provides a brief review of research related to the field of wayfinding based on these two factors.…”

“…These literature reviews provide an exhaustive analysis of a specific topic. As mentioned above, Jamshidi et al, reviewed the published literature on indoor wayfinding and identified two major factors in indoor wayfinding, namely (a) user factors and (b) environmental factors (Jamshidi et al, 2020). Dalton et al explored that the role of social factors in wayfinding is important for both basic research and applications.…”

“…User factors include wayfinding cognition, wayfinding behavior, and individual and group differences. The cognitive function, which refers to the mental processes involved in knowledge acquisition, information comprehension, and reasoning, is the focus of a substantial corpus of research on wayfinding ( Devlin, 2014 ; Jamshidi et al., 2020 ). The gender differences, age differences, and cultural differences of individuals will influence their spatial memory, information acquisition, spatial ability, spatial problem solving, and thus final wayfinding cognition and wayfinding behaviors ( Kirasic et al., 1992 ; Mondschein and Moga, 2018 ; Passini et al., 1990 ; Sandstrom et al., 1998 ; Suzuki, 2013 ).…”