A Wayfinding Research in Virtual Environments: The effect of spatial structure and different conditions on movement

Wayfinding studies aim to explore the factors influencing purposive and goal-directed movement and to observe the influence of different elements such as the number of decision points (Arthur and Passini, 1992; Raubal and Egenhofer, 1998), the spatial integration values of street networks (Hillier et al., 1993; Kim and Penn, 2004) and/or connectivity measures (Ozbil et al., 2016, 2015). There are numerous studies on wayfinding and associated environmental factors and this subject is of great interest to urban planners and designers. In this wayfinding study, we aim to analyze the effect of various spatial factors and different conditions on the wayfinding performance of people. In order to explain this effect, two different experiments took place in a virtual game environment: in the first one, different layouts were selected, and participants were asked to navigate a boat in these different layouts. In the second experiment, participants were asked to navigate the boat in the same-structured environments (the same spatial layout) but with different landmark conditions. For the first experiment, axial and segment-based integration, choice and intelligibility values as well as visual integration, intelligibility and choice were measured. Additionally, numbers of decision points, average and total segment lengths were also calculated. For the second experiment, ‘easy’ (salient landmarks placed at integrated locations) and ‘hard’ (less salient landmarks at segregated places) landmark conditions were created and subsequent wayfinding performance was compared. Preliminary results of this study indicate the number of decision points as well as a number of space syntax measures and environmental conditions had a significant effect on participants’ performance. We also discovered a marginal and insignificant impact of salient landmarks at integrated spaces on wayfinding tasks.