TY - JOUR
T1 - Development and evaluation of a VR research tool to study wayfinding behaviour in a multi-story building
AU - Feng, Yan
AU - Duives, Dorine C.
AU - Hoogendoorn, Serge P.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Although understanding wayfinding behaviour in complex buildings is important to ensure pedestrian safety, the state of the art predominantly investigated pedestrian movement in simplified environments. This paper presents a Virtual Reality tool – WayR, that is designed to investigate pedestrian wayfinding behaviour in a multi-story building under both normal and emergency situations. WayR supports free navigation and collects pedestrian walking trajectories, head movements and gaze points automatically. To evaluate WayR, a VR experiment consists of four wayfinding assignments were conducted. The validity and usability of WayR are evaluated using objective measures (i.e., route choice, evacuation exit choice, wayfinding performance, and observation behaviour) and subjective measures (i.e., realism, feeling of presence, system usability, and simulation sickness). Analysis of the objective measures indicates that participants’ wayfinding behaviour in VR matches with findings in the literature. Moreover, we found that overall participants behaved significantly different across wayfinding assignments with increasing complexity. Furthermore, the results of subjective measures indicate a high degree of realism, immersion, usability, and low level of sickness of WayR. Overall, the results demonstrated the face validity, content validity, construct validity and usability of WayR as a research tool to study wayfinding behaviour in a complex multi-story building.
AB - Although understanding wayfinding behaviour in complex buildings is important to ensure pedestrian safety, the state of the art predominantly investigated pedestrian movement in simplified environments. This paper presents a Virtual Reality tool – WayR, that is designed to investigate pedestrian wayfinding behaviour in a multi-story building under both normal and emergency situations. WayR supports free navigation and collects pedestrian walking trajectories, head movements and gaze points automatically. To evaluate WayR, a VR experiment consists of four wayfinding assignments were conducted. The validity and usability of WayR are evaluated using objective measures (i.e., route choice, evacuation exit choice, wayfinding performance, and observation behaviour) and subjective measures (i.e., realism, feeling of presence, system usability, and simulation sickness). Analysis of the objective measures indicates that participants’ wayfinding behaviour in VR matches with findings in the literature. Moreover, we found that overall participants behaved significantly different across wayfinding assignments with increasing complexity. Furthermore, the results of subjective measures indicate a high degree of realism, immersion, usability, and low level of sickness of WayR. Overall, the results demonstrated the face validity, content validity, construct validity and usability of WayR as a research tool to study wayfinding behaviour in a complex multi-story building.
KW - Evacuation
KW - Multi-story building
KW - Pedestrian wayfinding
KW - Route and exit choice
KW - Validity
KW - Virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119437301&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ssci.2021.105573
DO - 10.1016/j.ssci.2021.105573
M3 - Article
SN - 0925-7535
VL - 147
SP - 1
EP - 22
JO - Safety Science
JF - Safety Science
M1 - 105573
ER -
