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With regard to the outpatient areas of a hospital, the smoothness of the route is now taken into consideration in the process of configuring the wayfinding system. As patients often spend time on ineffective wayfinding processes, and there is limited manpower at hospitals and a lack of clarity in the information provided by the wayfinding system, it is difficult to provide effective and timely consultation services for patients. This study was conducted at Cheng Ching Hospital, Chung Kang Branch (CCH/CKB) in Taiwan. This study attempts to investigate the relationships between the wayfinding system of the outpatient areas and the patients’ behaviors in the hospital. Depthmap software based on space syntax is adopted to assist in the route analysis and wayfinding behaviors. It integrates axial mapping analysis and isovist analysis and gives suggestions on the location, format and content of the wayfinding system. The final results of the study show that in the wayfinding task experiment gender has no significant impact on the effect of wayfinding efficiency, while a significant difference is found for age. Older people need more time to complete the wayfinding task, which means that they have poorer performance in wayfinding efficiency. The analysis of the results of space syntax shows that a good wayfinding system should be a symmetric tree-branch structure rather than circular structure in a medical building, that areas where it is easy to become lost should have a clear signage guiding system planning and configuration, and that clear guidance information should be provided to the patients to achieve the goal of saving consultation time and improving the quality of the medical environment.

Purpose The efficient delivery of environmental information to wayfinders in complex environments is a challenge for information designers. Wayfinding tasks can be quite strenuous and frustrating in the visual absence of dedicated wayfinding information. This study aims to explore the behaviour regarding the use of wayfinding information by navigators in complex environments. Design/methodology/approach An experiment has been conducted in which participants have performed wayfinding tasks in a spatially complex university campus. The participants were instructed to use the think-aloud protocol during the experiment. The behaviour has been recorded using the head-mounted video recorder (GoPro), mobile phone screen (audio\\video) recorder and interview. Twelve university students have been selected based on the equal level of spatial ability using the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale. Each participant performed three wayfinding tasks to locate the unknown locations inside the campus using a mobile wayfinding application and other information sources. Findings The results of this study demonstrated significant behavioural preferences in acquiring wayfinding information. Most of the participants synthesised the static and mobile wayfinding information sources, while some preferred only the static ones. Gender differences have also been found for planning and route finding. This study recommends the syntheses of static and mobile wayfinding information for designing an efficient institutional wayfinding system. Research limitations/implications The sample size has been kept small because of the qualitative exploration of the wayfinding behaviour regarding the wayfinding information syntheses behaviour. The experiment findings can be further explored with larger data set and controlled behavioural metrics. This study can help understand the user requirements in facilities management for spatially complex institutional environments. Practical implications The current findings can be further used to develop a framework for wayfinding information designers to assist them in understanding the current practices and incorporate them for improving institutional wayfinding systems. The management of the offered facilities within an institution can be further improved to make the space more efficient by saving users’ time and efforts. Originality/value Information syntheses or symbiosis of environmental information with the beacon-based digital wayfinding system is a new concept. This study explores the potential of such information syntheses for enhancing the legibility of complex institutional environments.

Wayfinding refers to the process of guiding individuals through built spaces, particularly in environments where navigation may be challenging due to complex layouts. In hospital settings, efficient wayfinding is essential as it directly impacts the experiences of patients, visitors, and staff. This entry focuses on wayfinding strategies in Australian hospitals, where research on this topic is limited. The entry uses a comparative case study approach to analyse various wayfinding techniques for non-emergency services, including physical signage, digital navigation systems, and spatial design elements across six hospitals in Australia. The findings indicate that combining visual cues, digital tools, and spatial planning improves navigation efficiency. However, the hospital size and layout significantly influence the effectiveness of these systems. This entry provides insights into the current wayfinding strategies and challenges in Australian hospitals and suggests further research on global case studies using the comparative framework and definitions provided here.

Urban environments, university campuses, and public and private buildings often present architectural barriers that prevent people with disabilities and special needs to move freely and independently. This paper presents a systematic mapping study of the scientific literature proposing devices, and software applications aimed at fostering accessible wayfinding and navigation in indoor and outdoor environments. We selected 111 out of 806 papers published in the period 2009–2020, and we analyzed them according to different dimensions: at first, we surveyed which solutions have been proposed to address the considered problem; then, we analyzed the selected papers according to five dimensions: context of use, target users, hardware/software technologies, type of data sources, and user role in system design and evaluation. Our findings highlight trends and gaps related to these dimensions. The paper finally presents a reflection on challenges and open issues that must be taken into consideration for the design of future accessible places and of related technologies and applications aimed at facilitating wayfinding and navigation.

Wayfinding has only recently gained significance in the architecture of medical facilities. While several studies have examined hospital architecture, few have focused on wayfinding within emergency departments in the UAE. This study investigates the influence of transitional spaces and their physical properties on wayfinding. The Wayfinding Transitional Spaces Matrix (WTS-M), derived from the 2023 International Health Facility Guidelines, was utilized in a mixedmethod approach. The regulations provide criteria from an architectural standpoint. This research examined five physical properties: entrances and exits, pathways, landmarks, circulation routes, and interior design. The paper assessed three emergency departments in hospitals across the UAE, employing binary coding (✓=1, ×=0) to evaluate each aspect. The data was converted into percentages for comparative analysis. Landmarks were absent in any of the cases; in contrast, circulation routes were seen at a rate of 100%. The presence of other features differed. The conclusion provides a preliminary measure to define localized criteria that can improve the overall wayfinding experience in medical buildings in the UAE.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis from an ethical perspective of how the concept of indigenous wayfinding and voyaging is mapped in knowledge representation, organization and discovery systems.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Library of Congress Classifications systems and the Web of Science citation database were methodically examined to determine how these systems represent and facilitate the discovery of indigenous knowledge of wayfinding and voyaging.FindingsThe analysis revealed that there was no dedicated representation of the indigenous practices of wayfinding and voyaging in the major knowledge representation, organization and discovery systems. By scattering indigenous practice across various, often very broad and unrelated classes, coherence in the record is disrupted, resulting in misrepresentation of these indigenous concepts.Originality/valueThis study contributes to a relatively limited research literature on representation and organization of indigenous knowledge of wayfinding and voyaging. This study calls to foster a better understanding and appreciation for the rich knowledge that indigenous cultures provide for an enlightened society.

Augmented reality(AR) technology has emerged as a promising solution to assist with wayfinding difficulties,bridging the gap between obtaining navigational assistance and maintaining an awareness ofone’s real-world surroundings. In this article, we present a systematic review of researchliterature related to AR navigation technologies. An in-depth analysis of 88 salient studies wasconducted to address four main research topics: (1) the current state-of-the-art of ARnavigational assistance technologies, (2) user experiences of interacting with these technologies, (3) the effect of AR on human wayfinding performance, and (4) the impacts of AR for humannavigational cognition. We noted a recent rise in unified solutions for AR navigational assistance,with advancements in mobile devices, head-mounted displays, and versatile third-partyplatforms. A robust body of literature has demonstrated reductions in cognitive load andimproved cognitive map development when using these AR technologies, in comparison totraditional guidance modalities such as paper maps. However, findings about wayfindingperformance and user experience were mixed. For example, performance improvementsassociated with AR have been consistently demonstrated in indoor environments, butresearchers have not found similar advantages in outdoor environments. The research indicatesthat within AR visual guidance tends to be more effective than auditory cues, and that theincorporation of overview maps greatly improves the performance benefits of AR. While usersgenerally described AR navigational assistance in positive terms, they also reported specificchallenges related to hardware, localization techniques, and frustrating interfaces. The articlediscusses these nuances in detail while overall lending support to the conclusion that AR has agreat potential to enhance wayfinding by providing enriched navigational cues, interactiveexperiences, and improved situational awareness.

The role of robots in society keeps expanding, bringing with it the necessity of interacting and communicating with humans. In order to keep such interaction intuitive, we provide automatic wayfinding based on verbal navigational instructions. Our first contribution is the creation of a large-scale dataset with verbal navigation instructions. To this end, we have developed an interactive visual navigation environment based on Google Street View; we further design an annotation method to highlight mined anchor landmarks and local directions between them in order to help annotators formulate typical, human references to those. The annotation task was crowdsourced on the AMT platform, to construct a new Talk2Nav dataset with 10, 714 routes. Our second contribution is a new learning method. Inspired by spatial cognition research on the mental conceptualization of navigational instructions, we introduce a soft dual attention mechanism defined over the segmented language instructions to jointly extract two partial instructions—one for matching the next upcoming visual landmark and the other for matching the local directions to the next landmark. On the similar lines, we also introduce spatial memory scheme to encode the local directional transitions. Our work takes advantage of the advance in two lines of research: mental formalization of verbal navigational instructions and training neural network agents for automatic way finding. Extensive experiments show that our method significantly outperforms previous navigation methods. For demo video, dataset and code, please refer to our project page.

Background Anyone who has ever found themselves lost while driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood or forgotten where they parked their car can appreciate the importance of being able to navigate their environment. Navigation, or wayfinding, is a large-scale spatial ability that involves keeping track of the relative positions of objects and features in space, which allows for determining the path to a goal location. Early experiences shape spatial skill development, and research finds sex differences in spatial behaviors from preschool through adulthood, with males consistently outperforming females. The basis for sex differences in spatial aptitude is still debated, but explanations include differences in childhood spatial experience, the use of strategies for solving large-scale spatial problems, and spatial anxiety. The current study seeks to understand childhood wayfinding factors that may influence sex and individual differences in wayfinding strategies and wayfinding anxiety in adulthood. Method One hundred fifty-nine undergraduate psychology students reported their childhood wayfinding experience (i.e., time spent outside, distance traveled), current use of wayfinding strategies (i.e., route strategy, orientation strategy), and current wayfinding anxiety and general anxiety levels. Results Independent samples t tests revealed that, compared with females, males reported spending more time outside and traveling farther distances as children, having less current wayfinding anxiety and route strategy use, and having more current orientation strategy use. Mediation analyses found that distance traveled, but not time spent outdoors, during childhood mediated sex differences in route strategy use and wayfinding anxiety in adults, even when controlling for general anxiety. Furthermore, when controlling for participant sex and general anxiety, current wayfinding anxiety mediated the relationship between distance traveled during childhood and route strategy use in adults. Conclusion The current findings provide potential environmental explanations for sex and individual differences in large-scale spatial behaviors, including wayfinding. Specifically, sex differences in early wayfinding experience may explain why males and females develop different strategies for navigating and different levels of wayfinding anxiety. Furthermore, regardless of sex, allowing children to explore and navigate their outdoor environments away from home may help lessen their fears about navigating and, in turn, improve the strategies they choose to traverse unfamiliar territories.

The development of games is closely related to the development of game engines. Unreal Engine is a mainstream game development engine. Unreal Engine has a powerful lighting rendering function and blueprint programming system.Therefore, using Unreal Engine for game development will better meet the requirements of modern game users for game quality and game content. In games, the AI path-finding system is often the core of a game. However, the path-finding component of the unreal engine is usually only applies to three-dimensional game and is used for intelligent path-finding in dynamic environment. Howerve, the 2D game usually finds the way in static environment. At present, there are a lareg number of path-finding algorithms and theoretical studies based on static environment, but there is no simulation experiment and detailed explanation of intelligent path-finding in static environment based on the Unreal Engine platform. This article firstly explains the principle of path-finding algorithms that are several commonly used in static environment. Then it compares the performance of different algorithms, and selects the optimal solution among several schemes by summarizing the experimental results. Then based on the optimal path-finding algorithm, using blueprint programming to implement AI path-finding in the Unreal engine. Finally, this article sort out and summarize the overall work process and indicate direction for future optimization.