Wayfinding Through Orientation (WayTO)
Support for Spatial Orientation and Wayfinding in Real Environments Through Cognitively Appropriate Spatial Information Provided by Mobile Navigation Assistance (WayTO)
Homepage: wayto.uni-muenster.de
Description
Wayfinding involves memory for routes, general orientation in an environment and the acquisition of survey knowledge. Moreover, wayfinding includes problem-solving activities such as navigational planning. Competent wayfinding is based on a mental representation of large-scale space, the cognitive map. To date, mobile car and pedestrian navigation assistance systems offer guidance by instructing the navigator turn-by-turn based on a metric map. Those systems do not provide comprehensive spatial overview and orientation information. Therefore, they do not support the formation of a cognitive map. As a consequence, the navigator´s spatial cognitive processes are impeded. The present proposal develops a new paradigm for assisted navigation termed Wayfinding Through Orientation. This paradigm supports the navigators´ wayfinding activities through providing orientation information that is cognitively appropriate by resembling attributes of a cognitive map. The spatial information provided is schematized and includes different levels of abstraction as well as global and local landmarks in one visualization. It is proposed that orientation information in this form supports both spatial orientation and navigation in large-scale real environments.