Darken, R.P., & Sibert, J.L. (1996). Wayfinding Strategies and Behaviors
in Large Virtual Worlds. To appear in the proceedings of ACM SIGCHI 96.
Wayfinding Strategies and Behaviors
in Large Virtual Worlds
Rudolph P. Darken
Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, D.C. 20375
+1-202-767-2236 darken@enews.nrl.navy.mil
John L. Sibert
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, D.C. 20052
sibert@seas.gwu.edu
ABSTRACT
People have severe problems wayfinding in large virtual worlds. However,
current implementations of virtual worlds provide little support for effective
wayfinding. We assert that knowledge about human wayfinding in the physical
world can be applied to construct aids for wayfinding in virtual worlds.
An experiment was conducted to determine whether people use physical world
wayfinding strategies in large virtual worlds. The study measures subject
performance on a complex searching task in a number of virtual worlds with
differing environmental cues. The results show that subjects in the treatment
without any additional cues were often disoriented and had extreme difficulty
completing the task. In general, subjects' wayfinding strategies and behaviors
were strongly influenced by the environmental cues in ways suggested by
the underlying design principles.
KEYWORDS
Virtual worlds, wayfinding, navigation, environmental design, spatial orientation,
cognitive maps
CONTENTS
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Last Change: March 20, 1996
darken@enews.nrl.navy.mil