Landmarks are accepted as one of the vital elements in both virtual and real environments during wayfinding tasks. This paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the selection of landmarks in wayfinding mostly in large-scale urban environments and outdoors by discussing two main aspects of landmarks: visibility and salience. Environments and layouts used in previous studies, different tasks given to people and the main findings are explained and compared. Summary tables are created from these findings. The review concludes that there is mostly a consensus on the selection of landmarks, when considering their location. Accordingly, landmarks on route and also at decision points (with a turn) are more effective during wayfinding tasks. However, visibility of landmarks as well as visual and cognitive saliency need to be further investigated using different environments, tasks or different levels of familiarity with environments.

This study examines the extent to which street network configuration is associated with path selection by pedestrians. The aim is to better understand how the spatial layout of the street network affects pedestrian route choice behavior, controlling for pedestrian quality attributes. Randomly selected 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students (ages 12–14) from 15 elementary schools in Istanbul, Turkey were asked to draw their routes walking between home and school. Preliminary findings suggest that when all areas are merged into a single set, global choice, which measures the degree to which a street segment is located in between the shortest paths connecting all pairs of origins and destinations, and metric reach, which measures the street length that is accessible within a walking range, are significantly associated with route selection jointly with the distance to school, sidewalk width, distribution of pedestrians as well as the number of non-residential land-uses. However, directional reach, which measures the extent to which streets are sinuous or aligned, appears to be a strong correlate of route selection in the analysis of individual areas. From a design policy point of view, designing better connected street networks with reduced directional distance between home and school might serve as supporting navigation choices and walking behavior

The aim of this study is to understand what makes a landmark more salient and to explore whether assessments of saliency vary between experts and non-experts. We hypothesize that non-experts' saliency judgments will agree with those of the experts. Secondly, we hypothesize that not only visual characteristics but also structural characteristics make landmarks salient and that the size and visibility of objects are important for them to be considered as salient. To test our hypotheses, an online navigation game, Sea Hero Quest (SHQ), was used and two levels of the game were selected as the case study. The characteristics of these levels were evaluated by non-experts and experts in the field. Our results suggest that both visual and structural characteristics of landmarks make them more salient. We also discovered that experts' saliency evaluations are mostly consistent with non-experts'.

This study aimed to understand whether or not computer models of saliency could explain landmark saliency. An online survey was conducted and participants were asked to watch videos from a spatial navigation video game (Sea Hero Quest). Participants were asked to pay attention to the environments within which the boat was moving and to rate the perceived saliency of each landmark. In addition, state-of-the-art computer saliency models were used to objectively quantify landmark saliency. No significant relationship was found between objective and subjective saliency measures. This indicates that during passive observation of an environment while being navigated, current automated models of saliency fail to predict subjective reports of visual attention to landmarks.

This study investigates the patterns of occupation of outdoor spaces on a suburban university campus and seeks to understand the factors that affect them. The comprehensive methodology applied in this research attempted to overcome some of the shortcomings of related studies by conducting a longitudinal study (behavioral mapping during a year, as opposed to a few days) and by objectively analyzing the associations of user behavior and physical attributes, and the configurational properties of the campus layout. The results show that campus users fail to capitalize on the potential offered by the spatial configuration of outdoor spaces because they are not supported by amenities for pedestrians such as seating, shading elements and catering facilities. Supporting campus outdoor spaces that have the configurational potential of bringing various types of users (students and staff) with amenities for pedestrians and service facilities would create a lively and sustainable campus for its users.