Intuitively exploring unknown places without the use of technology
When thinking of harmful habits, the use of screens and technology was one that popped into mind quite quickly. When applying this habit to wayfinding and exploration, we noticed that a lot of us rely on applications such as Google Maps to find our way around. How do we interrupt this habit and figure out ways of explorations that are intuitive and away from screens?
In our opinion, and what we expect to learn from these experiments, is that the directional knowledge of our peers is lacking, and heavily dependent on having maps readily available with the click of a button.
EXPERIMENT 1: Drawing Zwolle from memory
To test our local directional knowledge, we challenged ourselves and surrounding students to draw in a map of Zwolle’s road network completely from memory. We provided an outline of Zwolle’s city centre and then handed these out. The lines put down on the paper varied greatly, gently confirming our hypothesis that directional knowledge isn’t common among our age group. We took these conclusions into figuring out experiments that show this in practice.
EXPERIMENT 2: Following abstract line maps
Bringing the first experiment into practice, we decided that we want to see what people do when they’re provided with an abstract instruction to follow. We drew abstract lines with a starting and endpoint clearly noted. We gave these maps to different people to see what direction they would head according to the maps. Do they expect a route ahead of time or will they discover something entirely new? Will all participants who have the same map, also follow the same direction?
Experiences from the Abstract Line experiment
What we concluded from this, is that this method can be used to get away from screens and explore more, but that it can be experienced as uneasy. We have to evolve this into something more framed and easy-going, and we have plenty of ideas.
Want to know what we did to continue?
Visit our HABITS OF ZWOLLE page
Want to know what lead to this topic and experiments?
Head back to our initial experiments page.
