Landmarks are significant in one’s formation of a cognitive map of both physical environments and electronic information spaces. Landmarks are defined in physical space as having key characteristics that make them recognizable and memorable in the environment. The challenge of defining measurable features of landmarks that can be used in designing and recognizing landmarks in information spaces is explored. By drawing on diverse areas such as urban planning, architecture, cognitive science and hypertext, a coherent definition of a landmark is proposed, which is relevant to both physical and electronic spaces. It is argued that landmarks can be classified in terms of visual, cognitive and structural dimensions, which has implications for how environments can be designed or built in such a way that landmarks will emerge appropriately for unique situations.

to be presented to us in a way which is not fragmented or disruptive of our current activities, for it to become a part of our cognitive space, and be remembered and integrated with the flow of our mental activities, we need to be able to map, directly or by analogy, some of the real-world architecture back into the computer display. We need to build a display environment, a tailored information landscape, which helps people construct a cognitive map to organize, sort, classify, remember, integrate, the variety of textual or visual information presented. In accomplishing this task, we have been inspired by the existing literature in the field of spatial orientation, from a cognitive psychology perspective, as well as the literature on mnemonics. Our work shows how our knowledge of space can be used not only to find our bearings in cyberspace, but also to memorize and organize information, using space as a memory device or technique. As "spacemakers" [Walser, 1990], we have therefore u

: The aim of this paper is to develop an architectural way of thinking about designing space in a virtual environment, in order to inform human wayfinding behaviour. Several generic objects and spatial elements that a virtual environment consists of are suggested, their spatial significance and formal characteristics are identified and the way that these affect human wayfinding behaviour is also considered. Keywords: Virtual environment design, human factors of virtual environments. 1. Introduction 1.1 Aim and context This paper documents a research project which deals with the architectural aspect of virtual environment (VE) design. The aim of this project is to develop an architectural way of thinking about designing space in a VE by studying the significance of spatial elements in a VE for human wayfinding behaviour. Designing Space in Virtual Environments for Aiding Wayfinding Behaviour 51 51 VR may be considered as the ultimate medium for producing representations of architect...

Spatial cognition and program development have both been examined using contrasting models. We suggest that sex-based differences in one’s perception of risk is the key to relating these models. Specifically, the survey map approach to navigation and the top-down development/comprehension strategy use similar and related high risk cognitive skills that males show a preference towards. Conversely, the route-based approach to navigation and the bottom-up development/comprehension strategy use similar and related low risk cognitive skills that women show a preference towards. On the assumption that programmers are consistent in their risk-taking behaviours, we believe that they will, as much as possible, tend to use the same strategy when performing program development and comprehension. In an experimental setting, we compare programmer’s performance on spatial cognition and program comprehension tasks. The correlations that we found suggest that programmers use equivalently risky strategies for program comprehension and spatial cognition. Thus, there is evidence that similar cognitive skills are used for spatial cognition and program comprehension/development, and that the similarities are a consequence of sex-based differences in risk-taking behaviour. 1

Wearable computing provides a means to transform the architecture and the space surrounding us into a memory device and a storytelling agent. We assembled a wearable computer specifically aimed to the purpose of mapping architecture into an experience comparable to that of watching a movie from inside the movie set, or being immersed in an information city whose constructions are made of words, pictures, and living bits. The wearable is outfitted with a private eye which shows video and graphics superimposed on the user's realsurround view. It uses real-time computer vision techniques for location finding and object recognition. We describe two applications. Wearable City is the mobile version of a 3D WWW browser we created called "City of News." It grows an urban-like information landscape by fetching information from the web, and facilitates the recollection of information by creating associations of information with geography. Wearable Cinema extends the previous system to generate an interactive audio-visual narration driven by the physical path of the wearer in a museum space.

The quality of an object localization depends essentially on the adequate selection of a suitable reference. In most computational approaches developed so far only the distance between the located object and a potential reference object has been used as a decision criterion. However many other criteria have to be considered for a cognitive plausible selection of adequate reference points. In this paper we investigate how object and context dependent properties, like referentiality, visual salience, functional dependencies, or prior knowledge, influence the quality of a reference object. Each factor is quantitatively determined and scaled by relevance to a certain context. The scaling permits the necessary comparability of the different quality criteria. Finally, on the basis of these factors a computational model is presented which permits a context dependent determination of the optimal reference object in a particular spatial configuration.

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An integrated representation of large-scale space, or cognitive map, called PLAN is presented that attempts to address a broader spectrum of issues than has previously been attempted in a single model. Rather than examining wayfinding as a process separate from the rest of cognition, one of the fundamental goals of this work is to examine how the wayfinding process is integrated into general cognition. One result of this approach is that the model is "heads-up", or scene-based, because it takes advantages of the properties of the human visual system and particularly the visual system's split into two pathways. The emphasis on the human location or "where " system is new to cognitive mapping and is part of an attempt to synthesize prototype theory, associative networks and location together in a connectionist system. Not all of PLAN is new, however. Many of its parts have analogues in one or another pre-existing theory. What makes PLAN unique is the integration the various components into a coherent whole, and the capacity of this resulting system to speak to a wide range of constraints. Our approach emphasizes adaptiveness; thus our focus on such issues such as the ease of use and the efficiency of learning. The

Virtual environment landmarks are essential in wayfinding: they anchor routes through a region and provide memorable destinations to return to later. Current virtual environment browsers provide user interface menus that characterize available travel destinations via landmark textual descriptions or thumbnail images. Such characterizations lack the depth cues and context needed to reliably recognize 3D landmarks. This paper introduces a new user interface affordance that captures a 3D representation of a virtual environment landmark into a 3D thumbnail, called a worldlet. Each worldlet is a miniature virtual world fragment that may be interactively viewed in 3D, enabling a traveler to gain first-person experience with a travel destination. In a pilot study conducted to compare textual, image, and worldlet landmark representations within a wayfinding task, worldlet use significantly reduced the overall travel time and distance traversed, virtually eliminating unnecessary backtracking. ...