INTERACTIVE WAYFINDING - USE OF CUES BY MEN AND WOMEN

To test the effectiveness of seven different kinds of wayfinding information used by men and women, 277 first-time visitors to a college campus, 126 men and 151 women, were randomly assigned to one of seven different types of cue information in viewing a computer simulation of a campus tour. Participants then took a computer 'test' using the same touch-screen computer monitor. Results indicated that men made significantly fewer errors than women on the wayfinding test and were significantly more confident that they could find their way than were women. Men also generally preferred the use of visual-spatial cues more than did women. Overall, participants who were exposed to textual directions (with or without reference to landmarks) or a plain map made significantly more errors than those who had photos supplementing the text or landmarks supplementing the map. Participants exposed to the two map conditions were significantly more confident that they could find their way in the simulation test than those in the five other conditions.