(Dis)orientation and Design Preferences Within an Unfamiliar Care Environment: A Content Analysis of Older Adults’ Qualitative Reports After Route Learning

© The Author(s) 2020. Ensuring that environments are designed to cater for those with decreasing orientation, perceptual and mobility skills, is an example of how environments are being changed to become more age and dementia friendly. However, environmental design should directly involve potential users of the environment to ensure that their views are accounted for. Four open-ended questions, focusing on orientation strategies, reasons for disorientation, and design preferences, were given to 32 older adults after they had completed a route learning task through an unfamiliar environment. A Content Analysis found a strong focus on participants’ ability to memorize routes based on verbally encoding the route and on their ability to remember landmarks, with the reports linking closely to cognitive theories of navigation. Design suggestions included the importance of a homely and welcoming environment, memorable features, and access to the outdoors. The findings can be used inform age and dementia friendly design principles

Regular geometry towards effective visitors wayfinding: a case study of KLCC vicinity

In developed cities, large office buildings occupy the city centre thereby destroying the legibility of these areas. These areas confront with a lack of visibility and difficult cognitive map. As a regular spatial configuration, Squares have had an effect on the characteristics of urban space such as intelligibility, synergy and accessibility. The goal of this study is to identify the importance of geometry of space on legibility, cognitive map of visitors and wayfinding. Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) was chosen as a case study because of its historical and cultural significance. Importance should be placed on its preservation for the future especially for tourists. A model of KLCC has been developed within the square that combines streets and KLCC area. It has been used as proof of the concept for a Space Syntax model network analysis using axial analysis and observations. Meanwhile, this study investigates the views of visitors including 86 respondents using surveys and interviews. Results show that there is a negative correlation between cognitive map and urban stress. Furthermore, all quantitative and qualitative data suggest viable cognitive map due to applying regular geometry may strongly improve legibility. The results show that there was a moderate positive correlation between legibility and regular geometry in general. On the other hand, existing geometry had a negligible effect on legibility. The role of the square suggestion is more immediate in high integration in the vicinity of KLCC. Moreover, the square can provide context for PETRONAS Twin Tower as landmark and symbolic building. Square as regular geometry is a good way to increase viable cognitive map. It affects the legibility of urban space where wayfinding will more strongly confirm that visitors display sociability and accessibility interaction. An implication for architects, tourism managers and urban designers is that square as a regular geometry associated with landmarks increases legibility. As a result, viable cognitive map by regular geometry is associated with easy wayfinding which decreases stress

Weganweisungen im Deutschen und Spanischen: Eine Vergleichsanalyse unter Anwendung von Visualisierungen

Diese Arbeit bietet den bis jetzt ausführlichsten Gesamtüberblick über die Produktion von Weganweisungen. Dafür wurden experimentell erhobene schriftliche Weganweisungen, die sich auf Routen innerhalb von Gebäuden bezogen, sprachvergleichend untersucht. Die Sprachdaten setzen sich aus Texten monolingualer Muttersprachler des Deutschen und Spanischen zusammen. Die Untersuchung ergab, dass Sprecher des Deutschen und des Spanischen Weganweisungen unterschiedlich formulieren. Unterschiede in den Grammatiken der beiden Sprachen führen zu Effekten auf Ebene der sprachlichen Form, da die Sprecher andere Informationen für die Beschreibung auswählen und diese Informationen auch anders formulieren. Sprachspezifische Unterschiede konnten in folgenden Bereichen festgestellt werden: In der Aufteilung der Gesamtaufgabe in Teilaufgaben, in der Textstruktur und in der Informationsdichte. Ebenso werden Rauminformationen in jeder Sprache anders ausgedrückt, wodurch deutlich wird, auf welche Raumkonzepte sich die Sprecher in den Weganweisungen beziehen. Die Bereiche, in denen Unterschiede zwischen den Sprachen bestehen, sind auf der Textebene voneinander abhängig, sodass sich unterschiedliche Muster für Weganweisungen in der jeweiligen Sprache ergeben. Die sprachspezifischen Unterschiede sind subtil und können nur durch Einsatz der speziell dafür entwickelten Spektrums-Methode identifiziert werden. Die Datensätze und die Ergebnisse werden mit Hilfe von innovativen Visualisierungen des Datensatzes dargestellt

Linguistic Representation of Problem Solving Processes in Unaided Object Assembly

This thesis investigates the linguistic representation of problem solving processes in data recorded during unaided object assembly. It combines traditional approaches of analyzing verbal protocols with the recent approach of Cognitive Discourse Analysis