Abstract
Passengers were unsatisfied with the navigation signs in Taipei station based on the Report on the Taiwan Railway Passenger Survey. This study conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 involved 14 participants using the present Taipei Main Station floor map to wayfinding, plan routes, and provide route descriptions for four specified destinations in the station. All participants were requested to recall the route that had just been taken and draw a cognitive map. In Experiment 2, 14 other participants were asked to perform the same tasks as Experiment 1 but with the new map. This study’s results showed that the codes used by the participants in Experiment 1 revealed the differences in walking route distance and number of turns. Escalators and stairs that connected floors were often used as reference landmarks for wayfinding. In Experiment 2, the overall wayfinding performance of the participants was improved by using the new map. The wayfinding time was reduced and the time spent in wayfinding among users was more uniform, and their route planning strategies used became consistent. The new map that facilitates consistent action strategies among users and corresponds perfectly to the actual environment is able to create useful spatial knowledge for users.
Highlights
Wayfinding is a cognitive process that varies according to individual goals and in response to external environmental conditions [1]
The route descriptions most used by the participants route planning (Tables 1 and 2)
According to the number of landmarks used by the participants during wayfinding Total usage numbers of speech codes used in Tasks 1 and 3 were higher than those across the two floors in Taipei Main Station, the results showed that escalators or stairs in the other two tasks
Summary
Wayfinding is a cognitive process that varies according to individual goals and in response to external environmental conditions [1]. Wayfinding can be divided into three specific but interrelated processes: decision making, decision execution, and information processing. People’s learning of the environment is serial stages of spatial development involving three forms of spatial knowledge, namely landmark knowledge, route knowledge, and survey knowledge [5]. Kuipers and Levitt [6] review several of their computational models of wayfinding in which spatial knowledge is said to exist in a hierarchy of multiple forms, including distinct procedural, topological, and metrical structures. Route knowledge is knowledge of travel paths connecting landmarks. Survey knowledge is configurational knowledge of the locations and extents of features in some part of the environment that is not limited to particular travel paths. Some conceptualizations posit special cases of landmarks (e.g., reference points, anchor points) that serve important roles in the organization of spatial knowledge [7]. Some have maintained that survey knowledge hardly develops much from direct experience alone but requires exposure to maps [8,9]
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