View article

1. The Psychology of Human Wayfinding We travel through the environment to reach places that satisfy our needs and wants. Successful travel requires that we know where to go and how to get there; it also requires that we can move along the intended route in the intended direction without having accidents or getting unnecessarily delayed. Taken together, these are requirements of navigation: coordinated and goal-directed movement through the environment. Navigation occurs over a wide spectrum of spatio-temporal scales. We navigate to the other side of the room, to the post office, to visit our relatives in another town, or to vacation half way around the world. In order to navigate effectively, we apply our psychological skills of perception, cognition, and motor behavior, within the contexts of physical and social environments, and with the assistance of technologies of information and transportation. There are consequently a host of human factors issues relevant to navigation. Attention to these issues can result in improvements to the design of technologies, environments, and training procedures that increase the ease, accuracy, efficiency, comfort, and safety of navigation.