A friend who was on a walking journey mentioned that one of her routes brought her to a very large meadow with no visible trace of the next portion of the trail. Without tools – map, compass, or GPS – she would have had no idea which way to go. The fact that this occurred in a location she was visiting for the first time is key; she had no prior experience to draw from. Even the position of the sun was of no use since she did not know the direction the path ahead would take.
Imagine that she did not have to abide by a schedule (including arriving at her terminal destination before sundown) and had decided to see how she would fare without using any external tools. She might have found herself exploring the meadow in stages, taking note of possibly meaningful landmarks — a boulder, a distinctive patch of some flowering plant, perhaps areas where the grasses showed signs of previous footsteps — repeating her steps multiple times, and possibly improvising a way to mark her route for later use. The more practiced she became in identifying signs, the more of them she might see.
How would this mapping process work? The first stage would involve tracking, which requires one to mentally map a path in the reverse direction. Unlike using the tools of technology, this technique demands that we engage our capacity for spatial memory – “the cognitive process responsible for encoding, storing, and retrieving information about the environment, including the location of objects and spatial orientation. It allows humans and animals to navigate, build mental maps, and remember spatial relationships”*
We are well aware of the benefits that ready-made Wayfinding tools provide. What might be lost by automatically resorting to them?
*Source: Wikipedia
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