Let eyes tell: experimental research on university library signage system and users' wayfinding behavior
ISSN: 0737-8831
Article publication date: 25 March 2021
Issue publication date: 14 February 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Wayfinding efficiency is an extremely influential factor to improve users' library interior experience. However, few research has studied the different functions of various wayfinding signages for university library users through mobile visual experiment. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between university library signage system design and patrons' wayfinding behavior features.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, an eye movement tracking method was introduced to record eye movement data during the wayfinding process of participants in the library interior, targeting the cognition and psychology of library users in the wayfinding signage system. The visual guiding usability of landmarks, informational signages and directional signages were quantitatively tested, and the fixation on the signage system between orientation strategy users and route strategy users was compared. This study also investigated the effects of library users' spatial anxiety and environmental familiarity on their fixation on the area of interest of the wayfinding signage system using the differential test and regression.
Findings
This paper observed that informational signage had the best visual navigating competence. The difference of fixation duration and searching duration between patrons used various wayfinding strategies was significant. The informational signage was most attended by the route strategy users, and the orientation strategy users rarely focused on the directional signage. And participants with high anxiety tended to ignore the visually auxiliary function of the landmarks but paid attention to the directional signage. The participants with low anxiety could capture the landmarks that could not be easily found by the route strategy users. And participants less familiar with the environment were more sensitive to the landmarks. Furthermore, this paper offers optimization measures for university library wayfinding signage system, from the perspectives of informational signage understandability improvement, directional signage physical specification design and wayfinding assistant system with automatic landmark technology.
Originality/value
This article adds to the relatively sparse literature on university library user wayfinding experimental study in China. The experimental findings of this paper also have important practical implications for academic libraries' wayfinding system evaluation. The whole process could be seen as a repeatable and standard framework and methodology to inspect university library's wayfinding signage system usability and user wayfinding behavior performance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors sincerely thank Meng Wang, Chenchen Cao and Wenkang Lu, all are library and information science graduate students from Institute of Science and Technology Information of Jiangsu University, for their assistance with experimental works and supplementary materials. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Lian Ruan, Head Librarian for Illinois Fire Service Institute Library in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for offering invaluable advices and informative suggestions in terms of paper revision.
Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant NO.: 20YJC870008, hosted by Wencheng Su); and the support from Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant NO.: KYCX19_1565, hosted by Yinglin Sun).
This paper forms part of a special section “Wayfinding from the User's Perspective: The Connection between User Experience and Library Wayfinding”, guest edited by Ryan Litsey.
Citation
Su, W., Lu, Z., Sun, Y. and Liu, G. (2022), "Let eyes tell: experimental research on university library signage system and users' wayfinding behavior", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 198-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-01-2020-0007
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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