The Environment is (Still)Not in the Head:Harry Heft & Contemporary Methodological Approaches to Navigation and Wayfinding

Abstract

Traditional approaches to spatial cognition focus on postulating underlying mental mechanisms, such as cognitive maps. Alternative theoretical approaches from the field of Ecological Psychology pioneered by Harry Heft offer needed perspectives with respect to how we understand and investigate navigation and wayfinding behavior. Successful environmental communication is about orchestrating an interaction that is flexible and robust; that can capture the idiosyncrasies of everyday activities. Abstracted, disembodied, and static representations of experience like the cognitive map fail to capture these idiosyncrasies. Employing a theoretical framework that focuses on the on-going perception-action processes of navigation will provide new ways to conceptualize communication systems that are adaptive, dynamic, and can successfully operate amongst the increasing technological complexity of contemporary spaces. New methodological tools from the field of Ecological Psychology can provide ways to identify these on-going processes that modulate interactions within environments as the interaction unfolds. These processes are constituted by patterns of physical movement and sensory experience as well as socio-cultural factors. The way individuals are engaged in these processes can change throughout the course of the interaction; the way designers establish, fluctuate, and disrupt the flow of this engagement is driven by when and how they intend users to perceive features of a visual communication system.