Wayfinding - Citizendia

Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place. Navigation is the process of reading and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another

Wayfinding is often used to refer to traditional navigation methods used by indigenous peoples. In more modern times, wayfinding is 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 term architecture (from Greek αρχιτεκτονικήarchitektoniki) can be used to mean a process a profession or documentation

Urban planner Kevin A. Lynch coined the term in his 1960 book Image of the City, where he defined wayfinding as “a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment”. See Kevin Lynch for other people with this name Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918 Chicago, Illinois - 1984 Martha's Vineyard Year 1960 ( MCMLX) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. In 1984 environmental psychologist Romedi Passini published the full-length "Wayfinding in Architecture" 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. Year 1984 ( MCMLXXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar)

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. Dead reckoning ( DR) is the process of estimating one's current position based upon a previously determined position or fix, and advancing that position based upon A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, Regions, and Themes A compass, magnetic compass or mariner's compass is a navigational instrument for determining direction relative to the earth's Magnetic poles It consists Astronomy (from the Greek words astron (ἄστρον "star" and nomos (νόμος "law" is the scientific study Basic concept of GPS operation A GPS receiver calculates its position by carefully timing the signals sent by the constellation of GPS Satellites high above the Earth

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

See also