Reading the Visual Environment: Wayfinding in healthcare facilities

Abstract

This paper reports an on-going project that studies how visitors search and use information from the visual environment to guide wayfinding within a healthcare facility. The execution of wayfinding task by ten participants as simulated visitors of a General Hospital in Malang, Indonesia were recorded by video camera and voice recorder. This study revealed that during wayfinding, visitors would focus on the visual environment. Visitors would search, select and use information for wayfinding by reading the environment. These results imply that the arrangement of visual environment is crucial to support wayfinding.Keywords: wayfinding; healthcare facility;visual environment; visual reading. ISSN: 2398-4287© 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.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 & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.