Wayfinding strategies and behaviors in large virtual worlds

Darken, Rudolph P.; Sibert, John L.

doi:10.1145/238386.238459

Cited by 252 publications

(203 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Spatial cognition research has already embraced VET (Chance, Gaunet, Beall, & Loomis, 1998;Darken & Sibert, 1996;Gillner & Mallot, 1998;Klatzky, Loomis, Beall, Chance, & Golledge, 1998;May, Peruch, & Savoyant, 1995;Pe ruch & Gaunet, 1998;Peruch, May, & Wartenberg. 1997;Peruch, Vercher, & Gauthier, 1995;Regian, Shebilske, & Monk, 1992;Richardson, Montello, & Hegarty, 1999;Rossano & Moak, 1998;Wilson, Foreman, Gillett, & Stanton, 1997;Witmer, Bailey, & Knerr, 1996).…”

Section: Spatial Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology

Loomis

Blascovich

Beall

1999

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers

561

354

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Immersive virtual environment (IVE) technology has great promise as a tool for basic experimental research in psychology. IVE technology gives participants the experience of being surrounded by the computer-synthesized environment. We begin with a discussion of the various devices needed to implement immersive virtual environments, including object manipulation and social interaction. We review the benefits and drawbacks associated with virtual environment technology, in comparison with more conventional ways of doing basic experimental research. We then consider a variety of examples of research using IVE technology in the areas of perception, spatial cognition, and social interaction.

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Section: Spatial Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology

Loomis

Blascovich

Beall

1999

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers

561

354

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“…Lynch's work concerned primarily strategies to increase the effectiveness of mental mapping. Recent research has concluded that wayfinding design principles from the physical world often apply to large-scale virtual environments (Darken and Sibert, 1996). In this work, global structure was recommended to support good wayfinding.…”

Section: Parallel Worldsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experiential Design of Shared Information Spaces

Waterworth¹,

Lund²,

Modjeska³

2003

Designing Information Spaces: The Social Navigation Approach

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This chapter outlines an approach to designing information spaces that we call experiential design, and illustrates the approach with examples of our recent work. The main virtue of this approach is that it claims to draw on universal primitives in the way people understand things, events, relationships -and information. And because of this virtue, it naturally supports social navigation of information spaces. The basic idea of experiential design is that, because we are embodied beings, meaning ultimately resides in bodily experiences. We have evolved to act in the physical world, and how we are able to understand abstract information is derived from that capacity. If we design for embodiment, understanding comes free; this is the first major benefit of the approach.The second major benefit of the experiential approach is this: since we all share the same evolutionary history and hence, bodily structures and potential for experiences, we share the same primitives for understanding information. This is what makes social interaction -and social navigation of information spaces -possible. If we design for embodiment, the potential for shared understanding comes free.A third benefit of the approach is that it is also applicable to the design of mobile -or wearable -computing, a line of research currently being followed here in Umeå by Daniel Fällman (see Fällman, 2001). However, that aspect of designing for embodiment will not be discussed in detail here.We experience the physical world as a three-dimensional space, with gravity holding our bodies, other people and things onto horizontal surfaces. To benefit from these characteristics, the most obvious idea is to create three-dimensional, spatial visualisations of information. The World Wide Web (Web) is by far the most popular shared information space around, and an increasingly popular approach to the representation of information on the Web is to use 3D rendering techniques to convey a sense of space and apparently solid structure.This means that information explorers can bring their innate skills for spatial navigation into play, 2 in addition to those few sensori-motor abilities utilised by the familiar direct manipulation (WIMP) interface. However, because no-one is designing the Web, and because of the simple linking mechanisms underlying its evolution, there is no way to make sense of its structure as a whole. There can be no 3D representation capturing its whole structure which, as is implied by our approach, means that people simply cannot make sense of its structure as a whole.However, space is powerful as a means of representing the structure of designed environments, such as personal file systems and the intranets of organisations. Personal environments can be happily represented as Personal Spaces -3D structures apparently containing stored and current items of interest to the individual user (e.g. StackSpace;Waterworth, 1997).In the following sections, we describe work to design information spaces that capitalise on the embodied nature of cognition. ...

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“…The concept of cognitive maps plays an influential role in the study of navigation strategies, such as browsing in hyperspace and wayfinding in virtual environments [12,[13][14][15]. It has been regarded that the acquisition of navigational knowledge proceeds through several developmental stages from the initial identification of landmarks in the environment to a fully formed mental map [13].…”

Section: Cognitive Mapmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Darken [12] noted that survey knowledge acquired from a map tends to be orientationspecific. In contrast, prolonged exposure to navigating an environment directly is more likely to result in survey knowledge that is orientation-independent.…”

Section: Direct Manipulation and Incidental Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the Gap: The Use of Pathfinder Networks in Visual Navigation

Chen

1998

Journal of Visual Languages & Computing

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This paper describes a generic approach to the design of a 3D virtual environment for visual navigation. The basic design principle is that users need to understand how an environment is organised and how they can utilise the knowledge to find their way through the environment. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between implicit semantic structures associated with a collection of domain-specific documents and users' cognitive needs in the context of visual navigation. We extend the notion of Pathfinder networks in order to represent implicit semantic structures in a 3D virtual environment. Users' cognitive needs in visual navigation are conceptualised based on the concept of cognitive maps.1998 Academic Press

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Wayfinding strategies and behaviors in large virtual worlds

Cited by 252 publications

References 7 publications

Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology

Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology

Experiential Design of Shared Information Spaces

Bridging the Gap: The Use of Pathfinder Networks in Visual Navigation

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