An Exploratory Study on the Relationship between Orientation Map Reading and Way-finding in Unfamiliar Environments

There are many ways to familiarize oneself with an unfamiliar environment, but most people use orientation maps to help them. In more complicated buildings, orientation maps may be posted everywhere, since they serve as important references for spatial cognition and wayfinding for users. A study on way-finding by Best (1970) identified a positive relationship between the number of choice points (hallway intersections) within a building and wayfinding difficulty. Weisman (1981) defined a number of environmental variables that people use to help orient themselves during way-finding, and categorized these variables into four classes: (1) signs, which provide directional information within a setting; (2) perceptual access, which provides a view to landmarks within or exterior to a building; (3) architectural differentiation, which is the ease with which different regions or landmarks within a building can be recognized; and (4) plan configuration, which is the configuration of a building's floor plan. Beaumont et al. (1984) interviewed building occupants and found that the layout of floor plans is equal in importance to other architectural features, such as the availability of signs, with respect to reported ease of way-finding. O'Neill (1991a) found that incremental increases in floor plan complexity reduce both the accuracy of one’s cognitive map and one’s wayfinding performance. O'Neill (1991b) also found that floor plan complexity reduces wayfinding performance, despite the presence of directional signage. Nichols et al. (1992) reported that the primary cause of way-finding difficulties in transportation centers is the complexity of possible paths. The accuracy of the information in one’s cognitive map can influence one’s way-finding performance (O'Neill, 1991a, 1991b). The cognitive map can store route and survey representations (Tolman, 1948), where route representations contain knowledge about individual places and the way in which they are connected through experience; in other words, the ‘travel-ability’ that exists between places (Kuipers, 1983). Montello (1991) proposed that the asymmetric structural design of streets is likely to mislead users: subjects tend to make more mistakes pointing out the position of an object and direction (east, west, south, and north) when on asymmetric streets than on intersecting ones. Passini (1999) argued that the acquisition of knowledge about places plays an important role in way-finding and determines one’s chance of finding one’s way successfully. If pedestrians acquire incorrect information about a place during way-finding, the chances are that they will get lost.