Wayfinding through technology
Cennydd Bowles, a user experience designer for Clearleft, discusses how people form mental models of urban environments, and how technology can augment and even replace our wayfinding skills.
The article was published on Johnny Holland and is an extract from his upcoming talk at EuroIA 09, The Future of Wayfinding.
“The ideal wayfinding system dissolves into behaviour. It requires no inputs, and automatically knows our location and destination. Its feedback to us can take the form of subtle visual, audible or tactile cues – highlighting the path ahead on some display, or even providing a gentle tap on the shoulder when we move in the wrong direction. However, it’s not easy for systems to truly anticipate our wayfinding needs.”
