Towards an information-theoretic framework for quantifying wayfinding information in virtual environments
Dubey, R. K., Kapadia, M., Thrash, T., Schinazi, V. R., & Hölscher, C. (2017). Towards an information-theoretic framework for quantifying wayfinding information in virtual environments. In Cognition and Artificial Intelligence for Human-Centered Design Workshop, 40-46.
Signage systems are critical for communicating environmental information. Signage that is visible and properly located can assist individuals in making efficient navigation decisions during wayfinding. Drawing upon concepts from information theory, we propose a framework to quantify the wayfinding information available in a virtual environment. Towards this end, we calculate and visualize the uncertainty in the information available to agents for individual signs. In addition, we expand on the influence of new signs on overall information (e.g., joint entropy, conditional entropy, mutual Information). The proposed framework can serve as the backbone for an evaluation tool to help architects during different stages of the design process by analyzing the efficiency of the signage system.