Wayfinding as a Social Activity

Description

Professor Ruth Conroy Dalton (Northumbria University) discusses the important, but greatly underexplored, topic of the social aspects of human wayfinding. Wayfinding is arguably among the most common types of real-world decision making at group level as well as individual.

Ruth highlights the myriad ways that wayfinding is not a solitary psychological process but is influenced by the actions of other people, even by their mere presence. She presents a novel and comprehensive framework for classifying wayfinding in complex environments that incorporates the influence of other people. This classification builds upon the premises of previous wayfinding taxonomies and is further structured into four parts based on (1) the nature of the interaction between the actors and (2) the time frame in which the interaction takes place.

Ruth also identifies gaps in our current understanding of social wayfinding and outlines future research opportunities.

Period	21 Sept 2023
Held at	Sign Design Society, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	National