Achieving a lean wayfinding system in complex hospital environments: Design and Through-life Management

Complex products, such as buildings and other infrastructure, should aim to provide value to the customer over all stages of the product life-cycle. This paper considers some of the challenges associated with maximising customer value when designing, producing, implementing and maintaining a wayfinding system for complex hospital environments. The hypothesis of this paper is that the tri-partite conception of knowledge flow provides a robust evaluative framework for the problems of wayfinding in complex hospital environments. The framework supplements the concepts of information and practice, conventionally applied in knowledge management, with a conception of physical objects and environments as knowledge carrying entities which are constituted, recognised and used in the course of social practice. From a lean perspective, the problems of wayfinding must be reduced or eliminated through adopting a lean knowledge management approach. A review of knowledge management, design, wayfinding and lean literature, together with ongoing participant action research at Salford Royal hospital, are reported in this paper. To ensure that wayfinding information remains immortal throughout the long life cycles of the building, a Through Life Management (TLM) approach is suggested. Thus TLM is viewed as an important consideration in lean construction

Is spatial intelligibility critical to the design of largescale virtual environments?

This paper discusses the concept of 'intelligibility', a concept usually attributed to the design of real-world environments and suggests how it might be applied to the construction of virtual environments. In order to illustrate this concept, a 3d, online, collaborative environment, AlphaWorld, is analyzed in a manner analogous to spatial analysis techniques applied to cities in the real world. The outcome of this form of spatial analysis is that AlphaWorld appears to be highly 'intelligible' at the small-scale, 'local neighborhood' level, and yet is completely 'unintelligible' at a global level. This paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of this finding to virtual environment design plus future research applications

Understanding Space: the nascent synthesis of cognition and the syntax of spatial morphologies

24-28 September, 200

Evaluating distributed cognitive resources for wayfinding in a desktop virtual environment.

As 3D interfaces, and in particular virtual environments, become increasingly realistic there is a need to investigate the location and configuration of information resources, as distributed in the humancomputer system, to support any required activities. It is important for the designer of 3D interfaces to be aware of information resource availability and distribution when considering issues such as cognitive load on the user. This paper explores how a model of distributed resources can support the design of alternative aids to virtual environment wayfinding with varying levels of cognitive load. The wayfinding aids have been implemented and evaluated in a desktop virtual environment

The design of caring environments and the quality of life of older people

There has been little systematic research into the design of care environments for older people. This article reviews empirical studies from both the architectural and the psychological literature. It outlines the instruments that are currently available for measuring both the environment and the quality of life of older people, and it summarises the evidence on the layout of buildings, the sensory environment and the privacy of residents. The conclusion is drawn that all evidence-based design must be a compromise or dynamic and, as demands on the caring environment change over time, this compromise must be re-visited in the form of post-occupancy evaluation

Finding a way: long-term care homes to support dementia

An ageing demographic has increased the number of people with dementia. Although dementia is commonly associated with memory loss, other early symptoms include difficulty with wayfinding. Dementia alters visuo-spatial perception and the processes used to interpret the physical environment. The role of the design of the physical environment for people with dementia has gained increased recognition. Despite this, design for dementia is often overlooked, focusing on issues relating to physical impairment. This paper presents the results of a PhD study and aims to examine the role of the design of the physical environment in supporting wayfinding for people with dementia living in long-term care settings in Northern Ireland. Mixed methods combined the observation of wayfinding walks and conversational style interviews to elicit perspectives and experiences of residents with dementia. The findings aim to promote well-being for those with dementia living in long-term care settings

Wayfinding in Complex Multi-storey Buildings: A vision-simulation-augmented wayfinding protocol study

Wayfinding in complex multi-storey buildings often brings newcomers and even some frequent visitors uncertainty and stress. However, there is little understanding on wayfinding in 3D structure which contains inter-storey and inter-building travelling. This paper presents the method of vision-simulation-augmented wayfinding protocol for the study of such 3D structure to find its application from investigating pedestrians’ wayfinding behaviour in general-purpose complex multi-storey buildings. Based on Passini’s studies as a starting point, an exploratory quasi-experiment was developed during the study and then conducted in a daily wayfinding context, adopting wayfinding protocol method with augmentation by the real-time vision simulation. The purpose is to identify people’s natural wayfinding strategies in natural settings, for both frequent visitors and newcomers. It is envisioned that the findings of the study can inspire potential design solutions for supporting pedestrian’s wayfinding in 3D indoor spaces. From the new method developed and new analytic framework, several findings were identified which differ from other wayfinding literature, such as (1) people seem to directly “make sense” of wayfinding settings, (2) people could translate recurring actions into unconscious operational behaviours, and (3) physical rotation and constrained views, instead of vertical travelling itself, should be problems for wayfinding process, etc. Keywords: Wayfinding Protocol; Real-time Vision Simulation; 3D Indoor Space; Activity Theory; Structure of Wayfinding process</p

From Isovist to Spatial Perception: Wayfinding in Historic Quarter

Based on the assumption that human behaviours are mainly affected by physical and animate environments, this empirical research takes the changeful and complex historical district in Tainan to observe wayfinding behaviours. An a priori analysis of the isovist fields is conducted to identify spatial characteristics. Three measures, the relative area, convexity, and circularity, are applied to scrutinize the possible stopping points, change of speed, and route choices. Accordingly, an experiment is carried out to observe spatial behaviours and different influences of social stimuli. Results show that social interactions afford groups and pairs to perform better than individual observers in wayfinding.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creative commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning &amp; Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: wayfinding; isovist; spatial perception and social stimuli; historic quarte

City rats: From rat behaviour to human spatial cognition in urban environments

The structure and shape of an urban environment influence our ability to find our way about in the city^1-2^. Indeed, urban designers who face the challenge of planning environments that facilitate wayfinding^3^, have a consequent need to understand the relations between the urban environment and spatial cognition^4^. Previous studies have suggested that certain qualities of city elements, such as a distinct contrast with the background (e.g. The Eiffel Tower in Paris), or a clear morphology (e.g. the grid layout of Manhattan&#x27;s streets) affect spatial behaviour and cognition^1,5-7^. However, only a few empirical studies have examined the relations between the urban environment and spatial cognition. Here we suggest that testing rats in experimental environments that simulate certain facets of urban environment can provide an insight into human spatial behaviour in urban environments with a similar layout. Specifically, we simulated two city layouts: (1) a grid street layout such as that of Manhattan; and (2) an irregular street layout such as that of Jerusalem. We found that the rats that were tested in the grid layout covered more ground and visited more locations, compared with the restricted movement demonstrated by the rats tested in the irregular layout. This finding in rats is in accordance with previous findings that urban grids conduce to high movement flow throughout the city, compared to low movement flow in irregular urban layouts^8-9^. Previous studies revealed that the spatial behaviour of rats and humans is controlled by the same underlying mechanisms^10-11^. In the same vein, we show that rats demonstrate spatial movement patterns that recall those of humans in similar urban environments. Rat behaviour may thus offer an in-vivo means for testing and analyzing the spatial cognitive principles of specific urban designs and for inferring how humans may perceive a particular urban environment and orient in it