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Wayfinding and directions

Contents (click to jump to a section)

• Directions to the university, and my directions to rooms within it and UoG indices.
• Wayfinding studies
• Relying on maps
• Redesigning a campus map
• The overall redesign problem
• Some pointers to maps
  • Some pointers to maps of/at other universities

1. How to get to Glasgow. A page for this, which includes sideways pointers to alternative accounts.
2. How to get to the university within Glasgow. A section on this within another page.
3. How to find the right building within the university. There are online maps to help with this.
4. How to find the right room within the building. Some text examples here and here; and a diagrammatic example here. Little online help for this.

Wayfinding studies

Nina Webster 1998: "Wayfinding in Glasgow University". Summary

Michelle Greally 1999 "Learning to find one's way: In search of improved campus tours"
Summary: Newcomers are offered a campus tour: usually 15-45 minutes walk round campus with a guide pointing out some of the more important buildings. These tours could be done in different ways: e.g. stops to rehearse knowledge, "treasure hunt" formats to engage active problem-solving, which is generally thought to promote more learning than simple passive listening. Tours do produce knowledge: apparently they produce in less than an hour a similar amount to that which first year students have after some months. However no measurable differences were found between different types of tour. It is unclear whether this is because there are no important differences, or that our measurement method was too crude.

Charlene Boyle 1999: "The role of maps: Considerations of 2D versus 3D maps, knowledge formation and landmarks". It leads to our current recommendations about redesigning a map for the campus (see below).

Susan MacLean 2000. Using sketch maps produced by recall as a measure had failed to show a difference in the knowledge produced by quite different tour styles, leading to a search for more sensitive measures of campus knowledge. This study compared seven different tests on 21 experienced campus users and on 5 newcomers before and after a tour.

Relying on maps

In our studies, only one subject refused to use a map. While many problems have been observed, in all other cases (including whole classes of school children) they have attempted and eventually succeeded in using them. It seems more reasonable, then, to conclude that would be unwise to rely entirely on maps, but that the effort to improve the campus map and to test its usefulness is worthwhile.

Redesigning a campus map

1. Use 2-D not the 3-D type: although both the literature and Glasgow campus people usually choose the 3-D type, they succeed in finding new buildings better with a 2-D type.
2. Ensure all the useful information is there: not just roads but footpaths; not just buildings' walls, but entrances (and which ones are unlocked, where the Janitors can be found, ...).
3. There are just 3 main landmarks used: the Gilbert Scott building, the Library, and the Boyd Orr. We should develop and test a final optimal version of the map: 2-D in style but with in addition some kind of picture of the 3 main landmarks.
4. Put north at the top of the map (as in all normal maps, but not the old campus map).
5. Improve the map key. The requirements for this include: users may need to start from or find either the building name (e.g. Adam Smith Building) or a department name (e.g. Sociology) to a map location. They need not only to go from a name to a map location,but also when using the map from a location to a name (e.g. what is this building next to where I am on the map?). So:
   • Create a combined alphabetic list of all buildings and all departments, units etc.
   • Renumber map locations numerically in the same order, so the alphabetic list is also a numerically ordered list. The "quadrant" letters, introduced to speed finding a numbered location on the map, may be retained.
   • Show the map key numbers on the left, not the right, of the names in the key to reduce the distance the eye must travel in reading them off.

The overall redesign problem

• Finding the right building
• Finding the right room within that building.

The media aids we need to design to support wayfinding include:

• A handheld printed map and key (see above).
• The larger maps displayed in a few places on campus
• Web versions of the map for use on screen. These can have useful interactive features.
• Web versions for printing off. Currently people do not carry web terminals around as they walk: so they need to print off something useful. Printed versions must fit A4 for printing, and be black and white. They could be specialised for different destinations.
• Building names. To be useful, these should be readable at a distance, e.g. 100 yards, and visible from every direction from which the building may be approached. A small sign next to the entrance is almost no use: only those who have already found the building and its entrance can read the sign. Those who want signs to be few, small, and decorative are putting their pleasure, which has no demonstrated value to the university, before the real needs of visitors, which do have a real demonstrated value.
• Signs like signposts. If these are to be a reliable system, then the next signpost should be easily visible from the last one; i.e. at least one signpost should be visible from every spot on the campus.
• A system for erecting effective temporary signs. See Willie Coupar's article for some suggestions. There needs to be a system for outdoor signs, and one for indoors ones.
• Indoor wayfinding -- finding the room you need -- also needs to be tackled. Every building is different in the problems it presents new users, and should probably be tackled differently. The issue covers: the system used for numbering rooms and floors, and the provision of directories (lists of rooms) and of maps or floorplans to show where they are.

  In addition, now or in the future, we might consider introducing widely:

• Photographs or drawings of the outside of every building, with a view to sending them to visitors to help them recognise the building they are looking for. Some departments already have this.
• Virtual reality techniques mean we could have on the web the ability for a user to move interactively through the campus and the building to the destination room. This would allow them to rehearse a journey, and even though they couldn't take it with them for reference, they would be able to recognise the places and turns when they got to them: something maps cannot do. Currently this seems to expensive in skilled time to take the photographs it is based on, would be slow to download, and only some browsers would in practice support it. But if it's possible now, it may be standard very soon.