Seunghae Lee

Comprehensibility of universal healthcare symbols for wayfinding in healthcare facilities.

Healthcare facilities are often complex and overwhelming for visitors, and wayfinding in healthcare facilities can be challenging. As there is an increasing number of global citizens who travel to seek medical care in another country, it is critical to make wayfinding easy for visitors who are not familiar with the language in a foreign country. Among many wayfinding aids, symbols are helpful for those visitors who have limited ability to understand written language. This study tested universal healthcare symbols in the United States, South Korea, and Turkey to compare the comprehension of symbols cross-country and identify predictors of the correct comprehension. To explore statistically significant relationships between symbol comprehension and countries, Pearsons Chi-square tests, logistic regression, and ANOVA were conducted. The test results showed that ten symbols among 14 tested have significant relationship with countries. Results of this study demonstrate that symbol comprehension can be varied significantly in different countries.

Understanding wayfinding for the elderly using VR

This study suggests that Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be used for the wayfinding study and design in the building industry with the special interest for the elderly people. Designers can benefit from this researchs wayfinding study tools in their own designs for the aging population. This study focused on the way finding design in healthcare facilities. Wayfinding in healthcare facilities is particularly challenging for older adults who have limited physical and cognitive abilities. To test and compare wayfinding performances between the elderly group and the young-aged group, this study developed simulated VR environments: 1) series of VR environments with minimal design features for wayfinding and 2) series of VR environments with several design features that aid wayfinding. Participants viewed the walkthrough VR movies that lead from one location to the destination and were tested to find the route back to the original starting location. Tests were conducted at three decision making points.

Indoor Wayfinding Using Interactive Map

This study explored the use of interactive map for an academic library building. An interactive map was developed for six floors of the building. Participants used the map on a mobile device to conduct four different wayfinding tasks. A mobile eyetracking system was used to record gaze information that participants viewed. The gaze data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively using Begaze software. The results revealed that there were some trends. Individuals who were familiar with information technology devices were more successful in wayfinding making less error and hesitation. Individuals who had better sense of direction were more successful as well. However, familiarity with the building did not seem to be making a difference. Some design implications for interactive map design were suggested. The areas that are not open to public should have more explicit cues that the areas are not accessible such as crossing out the area.