What is Wayfinding? A Guide to Navigation and Visitor Experience Design

What is Wayfinding?

Wayfinding is the cognitive and corporeal process and experience of locating, following or discovering a route through and to a given space.
– Dr Paul Symonds, Symonds et al., 2017

This means wayfinding involves both thinking and physically moving through space. It isn’t just about signs—it’s about how people process their environment to navigate from point A to point B.

Wayfinding typically includes four cognitive stages: orientation, route decision, route monitoring, and destination recognition. These represent the mental and physical process of navigating through space. Learn more about each stage below.

🎥 Watch: In this short video, Dr Paul Symonds explains what wayfinding means, with real-world visuals and context.

Why is Wayfinding Important in Modern Spaces?

Wayfinding is particularly important for a number of reasons. To provide a few examples:

Safety

Safety is a vital aspect of wayfinding.

Crowd control and safe movement of people are sometimes vital, such as in emergency situations.

Directing people efficiently towards their seats in sports stadiums prevents any potential issues from overcrowding.

Commercial Sales

Steering behaviour is invaluable for commercial outlets and locations in determining how they make profits.

Everywhere, including exhibition centres, tourist attractions, airports, urban centres, and shopping malls, use wayfinding to guide people to spend, to go in certain directions, etc.

Customer Satisfaction and Return Users

Creating a very positive customer experience is important for repeat business.

A lost user who is highly stressed is far less likely to be a return visitor to a location.

This has a detrimental effect on users and impacts the decision of whether or not to return.

Stakeholders, including venue operators and commercial planners, play a central role in shaping wayfinding systems to influence visitor flow, support safety, and enhance commercial outcomes.

User Experience

From a person’s own point of view (the agent who uses the agency to make decisions), efficiency, i.e., direct route, can be important, but equally so, we often go from A to B to enjoy the experience of the route itself.

What Are the Cognitive Stages of Wayfinding?

Wayfinding is not a single act but a multi-stage cognitive and physical process.

Scholars such as Arthur and Passini (1992) have identified a widely accepted four-stage model that explains how individuals navigate through spaces, and these stages help us better understand the decision-making and spatial processing that takes place as we move from one place to another, as we try and find our way:

1. Orientation (also known as the orientation stage)

We recognise our current location in relation to our overall surroundings.

A shop may be just inside a certain entrance inside a mall, for example. For orientation, we can use landmarks, signage, prior knowledge, other people (we ask where we are), and technology (such as Google Maps).

2. Route Decision

We then need to select a path to follow, and this stage involves choosing from various options.

We need to decide on the most appropriate and effective route to the destination based on available cues and our personal goals.

3. Route Monitoring

We also need to understand if we are on the right track, going the right way.

For this confirmation, signs, landmarks, or noticeable changes in terrain and the environment can help us avoid getting lost.

4. Destination Recognition

How do we know when we have reached our destination? You might see a sign confirming the location, such as a subway station name, or you might recognise the place, such as when the sports stadium comes into view.

Each of these stages can be supported — or hindered — by environmental design, signage clarity, and an individual’s prior knowledge or cognitive ability. Effective wayfinding systems are those that reduce friction in all four phases of this user journey.

5. Post-Arrival Reorientation

While the four-stage model remains extremely useful and still very relevant, I would posit that wayfinding also involves an important fifth phase: Post-Arrival Reorientation.

Once we get to one place, we inevitably then need to find somewhere else for a specific objective, particularly so in a complex and large space.

• In a transport hub, for example, we may have found the bus station, but we now need to find the ticket counter.
• We have found the college campus, and now we need to find the conference room as a day visitor.
• Or we find our way to the main terminal of an airport, but now we must find the Special Assistance desk.

Indeed, this is where wayfinding also extends and merges with the visitor experience.

It’s about beginning a new and more localized wayfinding process.

This post-arrival navigation is a key part of the overall visitor experience, influencing both comfort and satisfaction during complex journeys through public spaces.

This phase involves shifting from macro-navigation to micro-navigation, adjusting goals, and preparing for the next navigation task.

This is particularly relevant in today’s experience-driven spaces, where visitors often have to go through a series of wayfinding tasks such as (e.g., find airport parking → airport parking transfer bus → main terminal → Toilets → Departures → Cafe.

In these complex and large spaces, such as shopping malls and airports, augmented reality navigation technologies are increasingly being explored. These systems overlay digital cues, such as arrows or labels, onto real-world views via smartphones or AR glasses to help visitors find sub-locations more intuitively.

My Definition of Wayfinding in Use and Cited

Our definition of wayfinding has been used internationally and has directly influenced real-world projects.

For example, the Central Ohio Greenways Wayfinding Strategy (winner of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Ohio Chapter Award) adopted our definition from Exploring an Absent Presence to guide their planning. The strategy emphasizes going “beyond maps and signs” to include social networks, public art, and broader cultural approaches to wayfinding.

Below is feedback we received from one of the urban planners involved, showing how our work was applied in this award-winning project.

👉 You can view the full Central Ohio Greenways Wayfinding Strategy here (see page 70)

What Academic Disciplines Study Wayfinding?

Wayfinding is partly sociology, psychology, UX, geography, and business studies. It is both a cognitive and social activity influenced by design, culture, and stakeholder intent.

Wayfinding, in the past, has incorrectly been defined as an exclusively cognitive process and decision-making, but modern and updated research finds that wayfinding is a complex activity that covers many fields of study, including:

• Sociology
• Psychology
• Human geography
• Business studies
• Stakeholder studies
• Culture studies
• Signage design
• User experience (UX) studies

As highlighted by Symonds (2017) in his PhD, wayfinding is very much a sociological practice. In many situations, we follow other people, such as when trying to find a sports stadium. The idea of group behaviour is very common in wayfinding.

Likewise, psychology is important given that we make conscious decisions when trying to get from A to B.

Cognitive psychology specifically contributes to our understanding of attention, memory, and perception in wayfinding tasks.

Having said that, the question of how much agency we actually have over our own routes is an important one. This was also raised in Symonds (2017) and proved to be an important consideration.

Stakeholder studies are a vital aspect of wayfinding because many routes are designed with commerce in mind.

The design of shopping malls, routes through a large amusement park, and other attractions is often designed to maximize sales. The route is often not one designed to be the easiest for the user.

This type of user-influencing spatial navigation often incorporates environmental graphic design, an area of study that combines visual communication, architecture, and spatial planning to guide user behavior and movement.

Wayfinding, from a personal agent’s perspective (where we exert the agency), involves certain cognitive approaches, and herein lies the historical interest in wayfinding in psychology and cognitive-based studies and research.

A greater understanding of wayfinding, though, is now being appreciated with this activity and process, one which, for example, is important in sociocultural studies.

Wayfinding, rather than being a purely individual process, is a process which takes place in social situations and rarely in a social vacuum.

Stakeholders also use wayfinding as a way of guiding us, such as through steering behaviour, in order to maximise capital gains.

The intentional strategic use of smells and fragrances to attract a consumer towards a retail outlet is an example of steering behaviour.

Wayfinding is an activity/process that can be approached from a number of directions from a research perspective.

What is the History of Wayfinding as a Concept?

One of the earliest uses of the term ‘wayfinding’ as one word is from the architect Kevin Lynch in his book ‘Image of the City’ published in 1960. Lynch (1960: 3) describes wayfinding as: “a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment” and focused on how paths, edges, regions, nodes, and landmarks help to guide us through environments.

In 1981, Romedi Passini (1981: 17), in his book ‘Wayfinding: A Conceptual Framework’,  as an architect, explained wayfinding in the following way:

• Wayfinding denotes a person’s ability to reach spatial destinations in a novel as well as in familiar settings.

Other definitions have evolved since the 1980s, including Golledge (1999: 6), who describes this activity as:

• Wayfinding is the process of determining and following a path or route between an origin and a destination.

The problem, though, with many older definitions is a lack of focus on the true nature of wayfinding, as posited by Tim Ingold.

Places to which we are wayfinding are NOT always static, such as the example Ingold (2011) gives of the Inuits who go hunting for food, i.e., the location they are trying to find moves according to the movement of the animals they are hunting.

Seeing wayfinding as being about finding one’s way between two static points, as in older definitions, is flawed.

Likewise, Fewings (2001) uses the concept of ‘recreational wayfinding’, i.e., whereby the destination is the place you started from.

• Wayfinding is the cognitive and corporeal process and experience of locating, following, or discovering a route through and to a given space. (Symonds, 2016: 2)

This definition from Dr. Paul Symonds connects the historical and modern way of seeing wayfinding by incorporating both the cognitive and corporeal embodied experience, and provides room for the complex nature of wayfinding.

Hawaii and the First Wayfinders

It would be hard to discuss wayfinding and not provide a mention of Hawaii.

Wayfinding is and has always been needed throughout humankind because, quite simply, we always need and have needed to get to different places. Even if it is from one side of a small village to another.

The Polynesians who settled in Hawaii are credited with being some of the very first navigators to find their way across large distances and expanses of water.

These wayfinders used natural elements such as the movement of birds, airflow, the sun, and tides to navigate between places.

The stars and their patterns were also observed and used as a guidance mechanism. More on the history of wayfinding and Hawaii here.

How Does Signage Support Wayfinding?

Many people who get involved with wayfinding first think that wayfinding is about signage and ask – What is wayfinding signage?

Street signs, signage in airports that tell you which direction to take in an airport as you try to find the gate, or the directional signage you find in a tourist attraction telling you which way to go, are a few examples.

One internationally recognized example is LEGIBLE London, a pedestrian signage system designed to improve walkability and urban navigation across the UK capital.

Wayfinding is far more than signage, i.e, it is a more all-encompassing field, which includes the design of spaces.

For a deeper look at wayfinding signage considerations, including examples and best practices for design, make sure to visit our signage hub page.

Lighting, the use of people to direct other people, etc., also come under the banner of wayfinding and all provide ways of directing people.

Alternative Modalities: Acoustic Wayfinding

While most wayfinding systems rely on visual signage, many environments benefit from multisensory solutions.

Acoustic wayfinding is especially important for visually impaired users.

This involves the use of auditory cues, such as directional sounds, spoken announcements, or sound beacons, to help people orient, navigate, and confirm destinations in complex spaces such as transport hubs, hospitals, and campuses.

Let’s compare traditional signage approaches with integrated wayfinding systems to better understand their impact on visitor experience and spatial navigation.

What’s the Difference Between Traditional Signage and Integrated Wayfinding?

Aspect	Traditional Signage	Integrated Wayfinding System
Design Approach	Stand-alone signs, often added after space is built	Embedded in spatial and architectural design
User Experience	Often fragmented, reactive, or unclear	Holistic, intuitive, and user-centred
Information Delivery	Text-heavy and purely visual	Multi-sensory (visual, acoustic, tactile, AR)
Technology Integration	Rarely integrated with digital systems	Often includes apps, AR, live maps
Purpose	Basic direction-giving	Supports navigation, brand, and emotional journey

Wayfinding Models and Diagrams Explained

In the diagram above by Symonds et al (2017), wayfinding is expressed in such a way that the layers of complexity of wayfinding are all included.

To give an example, many studies on wayfinding focus on psychology and how an individual finds his/her own way.

Such focus and definitions, though, fail to include consideration for the people who ultimately guide you because of how they have designed a route to send you a certain way.

In an airport, planners and architects might create walkways that take you past shops and force you through a Duty-Free area, leaving you no other way to reach the departures area.

In this example, the diagram above allows for the full practice of wayfinding to be represented. In this airport example, in addition to the individual, wayfinding is about the planning, and commercial needs of the owner of the location, signage makers, and their ability to design navigational signage, architects who design space and so on.

So, in the diagram above, society represents the social influences including, for example, people we ask for directions, whom we wayfind with and who populate the same spaces through which we try to find our way. This also includes guides, such as a tourist guide.

Wayfinding, in other words, is very strongly influenced by sociology  

The diagram also included consideration for a very important aspect of wayfinding and that is the embodied nature of this practice!

If we get lost it can be very stressful and involve a range of emotions.

Some users are ambulant, meaning that they struggle in terms of mobility.

Some users have disabilities, whilst others are restricted, such as because they also have to choose routes that are suitable for guiding others, such as children.

A route might be across tough terrain and easy for an individual, but impossible with young kids in tow, and thus the route options change.

Finally, the diagram in the bottom sphere provides consideration for the environment and artefacts.

Technology, for example, is partly shaping how we navigate between places and also how we pre-plan routes. Likewise, physical signage, lighting, buildings and space all shape how we are able to wayfind.

Wayfinding is a dynamic practice that must be seen in this multi-layered way if the dynamic nature of wayfinding is to be understood.

Curious how wayfinding differs from general navigation? Explore our comparison of Wayfinding vs Navigation for clarity on both concepts.

What is Wayfinding Habitus

A key element introduced in the article by Symonds et al (2017) is the concept of “wayfinding habitus”.

We have past histories, and those histories help to shape how we act and make decisions.

Well, when we try to find our way in a location, we might already be familiar with it, or it might be a new location, so we may or may not know how to find our way there.

With wayfinding habitus, though, there is also the whole character we have developed as an individual that also helps to shape how we go about tackling a route.

We might be scared to try a new route, or we might, on the other hand, see it as an exciting challenge.

Our habitus shapes many aspects of wayfinding and how we tackle routes! We, in other words, develop a habitus that is specific to how we wayfind.

Inclusive design is also crucial in creating spaces that work for everyone. Learn how accessibility is integrated into signage and layout in our guide to Universal Design in Wayfinding.

What is Heuristic Wayfinding

An important concept in wayfinding is also what I term heuristic wayfinding. As we take routes, we are constantly making decisions and also constantly being affected by external factors.

• You may begin to feel hungry and adopt a route to find coffee or food.
• A traffic light turns red, and so you decide to take a different road and a different route.
• A friend calls you on your mobile, and this, in effect, changes where you will meet and the route you need to take.

Routes constantly change, and once we arrive at a destination, we are then inadvertently on the way to somewhere new!

If you found this post on what is wayfinding useful, you might also be interested in the wayfinding courses we offer! See below.

Want to explore how signage design and spatial navigation? Visit our Navigation Systems hub for guides, examples, and best practices.

Wayfinding FAQs