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Wayfinding & Finding Your Way

7/24/2015

2 Comments

 
This week's focus in CLMOOC has been on open and public spaces - physical and digital. Physical spaces welcome people in and help them navigate with signs and signals. These shape our actions and interactions. How are these wayfinding systems designed? Are there connections to how digital spaces shape people's actions and interactions. 

My experience with wayfinding in digital spaces started with the HumanMOOC offered earlier this year. The course leaders described themselves as wayfinders. 

Traditional 'you are here' markers are only the beginning. 
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Wayfinding is a term linked to urban planning but can apply to digital learning spaces. Wayfinding is about more than the system and design of signs within physical or digital spaces - it's the interaction between these cues to spatial orientation and people that use them. It's the process of problem solving with yourself as agent, the environment as active and engaging participant, and actions that can be tracked over time. I'm looking a little deeper into the design principles of wayfinding as a model for establishing a welcoming digital space.
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So, wayfinding within a digital space is a valid design consideration. How are agents navigating through the system? Where are they gathering in open spaces? Who establishes the wayfinding symbology? Who becomes the wayfinders to support the wayfarers?

In CLMOOC, I've been finding my way by watching the signposts (weekly CLMOOC site posts and updates, emails, G+ notifications) and gathering into spaces with others (Google hangouts, Twitter chat). My actions are determined by sites that catch my eye, just as sights do in physical spaces. I'm navigating my way through and it's only now, close to the end of the journey, that I can look back at where I've been - finding my way forward while sometimes looking back.
What about you? Who are your wayfinders? Where have you found signs and signals that direct you into the space?
2 Comments
Sheri Edwards link
7/24/2015 07:13:30 am

I like this way of thinking: wayfinding. It's like exploring in unknown places -- what drives you one way and offers a breadcrumb home?

I look for tags and categories within the people's places; I look at about pages; and I try to wonder about the connection of the people/places message to my own.

I wonder here if we are explorers, and if we'll get caught up in the exploring and forget to create and add to the communities we visit in ways that organize softly without harm or greed.

We thought space was the next frontier, but...

Thanks for helping to help everyone think about these issues for creating a better space and place.

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5/4/2018 05:31:28 am

Thanks for sharing these useful information! This is really interesting information for me.

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    HJ.DeWaard

    Connecting and knowledge building for CLMOOC 2015

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