Christoph Hölscher

Wayfinding Strategies and Environmental Features

Abstract

In this presentation I will report on our research on wayfinding strategies
in complex public buildings. Such strategies are highly adaptive to
geometric and topological properties of the building, visibility of path
choices, salient landmarks and signage. At the same time, cognitive factors,
like preference for certain strategies, differences in spatial competence
and familiarity with the setting contribute to path choices as well. I will
discuss how behavioral data, verbal reports as well as formal modeling of
spatial properties with Space Syntax can help untangle the contributing
variables, and how real-world experiments and systematic layout variations
in Virtual Reality can inform each other.