Wayfinding

Polynesian navigation device showing directions of winds, waves and islands, c. 1904

Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.

Historical

Historically, wayfinding refers to the techniques used by travelers over land and sea to find relatively unmarked and often mislabeled routes. These include but are not limited to dead reckoning, map and compass, astronomical positioning and, more recently, global positioning.^{citation needed}

Polynesia

Wayfinding is the traditional navigation methods used by indigenous peoples of Polynesia.

Urban planning

In the 1960s, the American urban planner and theorist Kevin Lynch introduced the term wayfinding as it is now commonly used.

In more modern times, wayfinding has been used in the context of architecture to refer to the user experience of orientation and choosing a path within the built environment, and it also refers to the set of architectural and/or design elements that aid orientation. The urban planner Kevin A. Lynch borrowed the term for his 1960 book The Image of the City, where he defined wayfinding as “a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment”. One comprehensive example is the Pittsburgh Wayfinder System.

In 1984 environmental psychologist Romedi Passini published the full-length "Wayfinding in Architecture"^{citation needed} and expanded the concept to include signage and other graphic communication, clues inherent in the building's spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements, and provision for special-needs users.

Architectural (indoor) wayfinding

Indoor wayfinding in modern large public buildings such as hospitals is commonly noted as indoor navigation with indoor maps or building directory. Increasingly common is offering visitors indoor maps for handheld mobile devices and also information kiosk systems. A modern proprietary application is called 3D Wayfinder.

This term is also used in reference to parking management strategies that help drivers find parking garages.

See also

• Desire path
• Environmental psychology
• Orienteering
• Outdoor education
• Route choice in orienteering
• Space syntax
• Urban planning
• Waymarking