Locomotional Structure in Service of Wayfinding: A Partial Design Theory

This paper introduces a partial theory of design for locomotion. The goal of the theory is to help generate actual designs by informing design content. Assuming that locomotion is always in service of the cognitive task of wayfinding, the theory relates cognitive constructs of wayfinding problem-solving and decision-making to features of locomotional design. Specifically, the theory suggests that the complexity of wayfinding reasoning is controlled, in part, by how closely the set of locations and ways of moving between them provided in the environment matches those necessitated by the user’s task. The theory has been applied to the design of support for the task of moving between individual objects in a multiscale environment. The resulting lodestones and leylines design constrains locomotion based on inter-object geometry and uses an approximate indication of direction from the user to predict a target location and guide movement. Preliminary results of a pilot study indicate that this technique dramatically improves wayfinding performance over locomotional techniques based on geometry of the space itself.