Social and spatial factors of wayfinding usability

Abstract

This manuscript presents three studies. The first chapter gives an overview of the theoretical background. The second chapter summarizes the three studies presented in the thesis. The third chapter discusses the implications of the findings. The fourth chapter discusses challenges and limitations. The manuscripts of the three studies are presented in the appendix, as well as two additional manuscripts co-authored by the author of this thesis. The user experience of a building takes place at the intersection of building features, user characteristics and task properties. Each of these elements of the user experience has been studied in spatial cognition, architecture and user experience research, but almost always independently from the other elements. By assuming the usability research approach, we studied performance of individuals and groups in a wayfinding context in simple and complex environments. Study 1 focuses on social wayfinding in urban environments. Wayfinding in pedestrians has traditionally been studied as an individual activity; however, most users of public spaces navigate in groups. In addition to the group members, wayfinders can be further influenced by other individuals in their environment, and by the environmental structure. In this study, we examined the influence of group membership and environmental structure on wayfinding performance. We controlled for the crowd level in the environment. A total of 295 volunteers navigated through the main hall of the Zurich Main Station in the presence or absence of Christmas market stalls, either as individuals or in four-member groups. They performed five wayfinding tasks. Higher crowd level in the main hall was associated with higher task completion time. After controlling for crowd level, groups needed more time than individuals to complete the wayfinding tasks. Participants walked longer distances, made more turns and had higher angular deviation when Christmas market stalls were present in the environment, after controlling for crowd level. Collaboration emerged as a dominant group configuration in our sample. Study 2 takes a closer look at the roles during dyad wayfinding. A member of a dyad can be a leader, a follower, or collaborate with the other dyad member. This relationship during wayfinding has mostly been studied during in-vehicle navigation. The aim of study 2 is to investigate the effect of role relationship on wayfinding performance in a pedestrian dyad. Additionally, the influence of spatial abilities and motivation to lead on dyad performance is examined. Dyads performed eight wayfinding tasks at the Zurich Main Station. The first five were used to establish the emergent role relationship in the dyad. In the last three, each participant was asked to lead the dyad once, and dyad was asked to collaborate. These role relationships were assigned in the random order. The study shows that dyads have chosen significantly more efficient paths and had higher wayfinding velocities when navigating in their emergent role relationship. Collaborative dyads did not have higher path efficiency than leader-follower dyads, but they had higher wayfinding velocity. The same dyad performed significantly better on average when lead by the member with higher sense of direction score, but the same did not hold true when the dyad was lead by the member with higher motivation to lead. Study 3 concerns the building usability evaluation methods. Usability research offers an abundance of methods that could potentially be modified to evaluate usability of a building. However, practitioners call for fast and easy to learn methods that are similar to methods used to evaluate other building qualities. In this study, a traditional expert evaluation method, cognitive walkthrough, is applied in a novel way to evaluate the usability of two shopping malls in Singapore (ION Orchard and Westgate) for four wayfinding tasks. An additional analysis of the materials generated by experts is proposed in order to maximize the utility of the method. Experts identified usability problems within the two malls. The problems were classified in usability categories and their severity was estimated. Possible interventions to address the usability problems were suggested. Additionally, a satisfaction survey with mall users was conducted. The survey showed that less frequent users are more satisfied with the experience in ION Orchard, but the difference disappears once frequent users are included in the analysis.