Wayfinding - LO-Wiki

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IRB FAQ > Structured interviewing > Rare Diseases > Managing HeC growth > Wayfinding

Wayfinding refers to the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.

Another definition: Wayfinding is a fancy word for the series of things people know and do in order to get from one place to another, inside or outside. Wayfinding can be a snap or an onerous take, depending on the person, the environment, and the situation. You can think of wayfinding as a five step process. It starts with knowing where you are. It means knowing your destination, following the best route to your destination, being able to recognize your destination, and finding your way back to your starting point. — Directional Sense by Jan Carpman and Myron Grant. Evans & Co. (2006)

Wayfinding is often used to refer to traditional navigation methods used by indigenous peoples. In more modern times, wayfinding is used in the context of architecture to refer to the user experience of orientation and choosing a path within the built environment, and it also refers to the set of architectural and/or design elements that aids orientation.

Researcher Kevin Lynch coined the term in his 1960 book "Image of the City". In 1984 environmental psychologist Romedi Passini published the full-length "Wayfinding in Architecture" and expanded the concept to include signage and other graphic communication, clues inherent in the building's spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements, and provision for special-needs users.

Historically, wayfinding refers to the techniques used by travelers over land and sea to find relatively unmarked and often mislabeled routes. These include but are not limited to dead reckoning, map and compass, astronomical positioning and, more recently, global positioning.

Recently, the term has become used in the realm of Information technology, as the web becomes ubiquitous.^[1]