| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 資訊系統與應用研究所 === 100 === Humans often lose their way in an unfamiliar setting, in virtual as well as real environ-ments. In both cases, gender, spatial ability, and other factors affect wayfinding behaviors. However, human wayfinding behaviors are complicated. Although several factors have been examined in previous studies, little is known about different types of movement in virtual environments and whether users’ spatial ability directly affects the wayfinding strategies they adopt. On the other hand, virtual environments provide fewer navigational cues than the real world; hence, users may apply different wayfinding strategies than those they use in the real world. The goal of this study was to determine how different movement modes and spatial abilities affect wayfinding behavior and spatial knowledge construction in a 3D virtual world.
Between-participant factorial analyses were used to determine the effects of two inde-pendent variables, movement modes and spatial ability, on users’ wayfinding performance and spatial knowledge construction. An experiment examined four groups of participants: those with high spatial ability who were instructed in flying or walking in the environment and those with low spatial ability who were instructed in flying or walking. The dependent variables were the number of targets found, the time required, the difficulty of finding tar-gets, preferred wayfinding strategies, route description, presence, the correct rate of sketch-ing map, and users’ spatial knowledge test scores. A total of 72 participants with high or low spatial ability were selected to complete the experiment on the basis of their spatial ability scores. Participants were required to find targets, perform wayfinding activities, sketch maps, and have their spatial knowledge tested in the virtual world.
The results showed that the type of movement (flying or walking) affected the number of 3D targets found, time required, difficulty of finding 3D targets, and difficulty of finding 2D targets. In the virtual world, participants with high spatial ability and flyers preferred to adopt a survey strategy and were good at using directions to describe a route. Walkers pre-ferred to adopt a landmark strategy along with a route strategy and were good at using left or right turns to describe a route. Thus, the results showed that the movement mode was the main effect factor. A comparison of the real world and virtual world wayfinding strategies revealed that only the route strategy differed. Furthermore, the results also indicated that participants with high spatial ability constructed more complete survey knowledge than those with low spatial ability. In addition, flyers constructed a more complete landmark knowledge and survey knowledge than walkers.
Finally, our results can be applied to suggest suitable movement modes according to the type of task that promote the acquisition of spatial knowledge and improve users’ perfor-mance in virtual worlds. The results also provide design principles for game developers that facilitate the development of interfaces and operational modes that prevent users from los-ing their way.
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