| Wayfinding refers to the ability to find a way to a particular destination and identify our location. This ability is essential to our daily life, for example, find a way to classroom, store, school and so on. But most people have an unpleasant story about a building that they often get lost in an indoor environment. Therefore, indoor wayfinding have received more and more attention from environmental psychology and cognitive psychology.A.S.Nossum designed two different map styles each intended to satisfy different users and task depending on the user’s familiarity with the environment. These maps include all floors in one map view. This allows the map user to easier comprehend the structure of the building without using several maps. We hypothesize that this 3D map can help participants to build a multi-level cognitive map, further improve the wayfinding performance. The first question we want to study is whether map style can affect the indoor wayfinding performance. The second question we want to explore is the affect of sex, wayfinding strategy, task difficulty and map style on indoor wayfinding performance.Thirty nine subjects participated in this study, included twenty two males and nineteen females. Independent variables include sex, wayfinding strategy, task difficulty and map style. Task difficulty is within subjects variables. Sex and map style are between subjects variables. wayfinding strategy is measured through Indoor wayfinding strategy scale. Dependent variables are route knowledge and survey knowledge. Route knowledge is recorded by errors when the wrong direction was taken at a turning point. Survey knowledge is recorded by angle errors.This study is an empirical research, we choose an indoor building as our experiment place, and we choose the first floor and the second floor to study. In the research, first, each participant was told that she or he have to learn one of the maps, the time is no limit. 2D map is the floor plans of the one floor and second floor.3D map is included two floors in one map, the different floors are placed in layers and positioned on top of each other. Second, participants need to complete the wayfinding task, include 2D wayfinding task and 3D wayfinding task. In 2D wayfinding task, the starting point and the destination are in one floor, with no altitude information. In 3D wayfinding task, starting point is in one floor and the object is in two floors, with altitude information. Third, at the end of the wayfinding task, participants have to complete a pointing task. 2D pointing task is to point the 5 landmarks at the second floor, 3D pointing task is to point the 5 landmarks at one floor. Participants were given sheets of paper each with a small, filled circle centered with a large circle. Participants indicated the direction to a location by drawing a straight line from the filled circle, which they were told was their position, to the outer circle. Finally, Participants finished the Indoor Wayfinding Strategy Scale.The conclusions of the study are as follows:(1) In the wayfinding task, the turning errors were significant different between task difficulties, for the 2D wayfinding task is shorter than the 2D wayfinding task.(2) In the pointing task, the angle errors were significant different between sex, task difficulty and map style. The angle error for 2D wayfinding task is shorter than 3D wayfinding task. The angle error for males is shorter than famales. The angle error for 3D map is shorter than 2D map. In addition, the interaction between task difficulty and map style is significant.(3) The Wayfiding strategy Scale result showed that the score of orientation strategies for the males is higer than females. But on route strategies and building configuration, the gender effect is not significant.(4) For the wayfinding task, indoor orientation strategy can predict the turning errors.(5) For the pointing task, sex can predict the angle errors. |
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