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.
Highlights
Being able to find one’s way in a building is a prerequisite for successfully fulfilling one’s goal in that building (Weisman, 1981)
The following review reports findings of the 84 studies included in the review. It begins by reporting the results of studies into the relationships between sub-domains of different user factors, starting with wayfinding cognition followed by wayfinding behavior, and individual and group differences
There are some areas of research that only lead to general spatial cognition knowledge and not wayfinding knowledge
Summary
Being able to find one’s way in a building is a prerequisite for successfully fulfilling one’s goal in that building (Weisman, 1981). The process of determining a route from one location to another and navigating that route is referred to as “wayfinding” (Chen et al, 2009). Wayfinding and navigation have been used interchangeably in the literature (e.g., McNamara et al, 2008). Montello (2005) proposed that navigation consists of wayfinding and locomotion. He distinguished between wayfinding, as the decision-making process of determining a route to a destination, and locomotion, as the act of moving on a route (Montello, 2005). Some researchers used navigation and locomotion interchangeably (e.g., Karimi, 2015)
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