The virtual railway station

Wayfinding experiences in a virtual environment and their application to reality

Veronika Egger (is-design GmbH)

In a fully immersive virtual environment that modeled the new Vienna Central Station this research project investigated to what extent virtual reality might serve to evaluate the quality of orientation signage. From an information design point of view, two questions were particularly relevant: (1) How applicable are results from a virtual environment to the real world? and (2) Is this type of virtual environment suitable for testing with elderly people and people who are partially sighted? The article describes evaluation methods, limits and strengths of the virtual environment and lessons for real world application of results.

Keywords: visual impairment, wayfinding, elderly users, virtual reality

Published online: 11 November 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.22.2.05egg

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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Dong, Weihua, Tong Qin, Tianyu Yang, Hua Liao, Bing Liu, Liqiu Meng & Yu Liu

2022. Wayfinding Behavior and Spatial Knowledge Acquisition: Are They the Same in Virtual Reality and in Real-World Environments?. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 112:1 ► pp. 226 ff.

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