Professor Ruth Conroy Dalton (Northumbria University) discussed the important, but greatly underexplored, topic of the social aspects of human wayfinding. Wayfinding is arguably among the most common types of real-world decision making at group level as well as individual.
Ruth highlighted the myriad ways that wayfinding is not a solitary psychological process but is influenced by the actions of other people, even by their mere presence. She presents a novel and comprehensive framework for classifying wayfinding in complex environments that incorporates the influence of other people. This classification builds upon the premises of previous wayfinding taxonomies and is further structured into four parts based on (1) the nature of the interaction between the actors and (2) the time frame in which the interaction takes place.
Ruth also identified gaps in our current understanding of social wayfinding and outlines future research opportunities.
About our speaker
Ruth Conroy Dalton is a British architect, author and Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University. She has authored or contributed to more than 200 publications. She is an expert in space syntax analysis, pedestrian movement and wayfinding and a world-leading authority on the overlap between architecture and spatial cognition. As a licensed architect, she has worked for Foster and Partners and Sheppard Robson Architects and key projects upon which she has worked include the Carré d’Art de Nîmes and the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia. She has taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), and Northumbria University, where she was Head of Department for the Architecture and Built Environment Department, the first woman to hold the post. In 2019 she became the Inaugural / Founding Professor of Architecture and the first Head of the Lancaster School of Architecture at Lancaster University, before returning to Northumbria University in 2022.
Date / time
Thursday 21 September 2023 (1pm BST)