Discovering and Classifying Errors in Way Finding

The term navigation error has various meanings and usages in the navigation literature. They are often simplistic and avoid any detail of the source, process, description, outcome or correction tactics of errors. Additionally, little attention is paid to the differences between errors, as existing work simply concentrates on the end result of errors causing problems for the navigator. This work aims to provide detailed descriptions of individual low-level navigation errors. To do this, a way finding experiment was conducted with two versions of a paper map. The use of two versions was to discover if the map could influence navigation errors. The results show that not only the navigator was responsible for navigation errors but also the map and the environment were culpable in several forms of errors. This work identifies and categorises 10 different types of error found in the experiment. Each error is described, the source (navigator, map or environment) of the error is identified and the effect on the navigator and how he/she corrected it is recorded. This taxonomy may be used as a stepping stone for future work in designing urban areas that are easy to navigate in.