Social navigation inna jungle
Posted: January 5th, 2009 | 2 Comments »Different forms of social navigation:
What’s more important: the yellow/blue tagging on the tree? or the fact that the passage of people left a continuous trace showing a path? Which one will you trust?
Is it a matter of trust or of convenience?
In the AR games I’ve been working on, we ask players to stay off trails (they can *trust* the GPS locative device), but unless really motivated they will often take the easiest route, which is often the trail. Trails are semi-permanent scars that often follow the “easiest” path (or paths that wind through “safe” areas and less environmentally-damageable areas). It’s often easier (more convenient) to walk where others have walked because they’ve worn down the rough spots.
Assuming the goal of the user is to get to specific location (not necessarily the most commonly visited location), the two marks serve different scales and purposes. The worn trail directs where the user should walk for the short term, for the next 1-20 m or so (especially when between widely separated blazes). It helps the user stay on _a_ trail. It works because most people want to remain on a blazed trail (i.e., walk between blazes).
The colored blazes indicate where (each) trail goes, so they are more for long term navigation decisions, on a scale of kilometers. They help the user stay on _the_ trail (e.g., the one back to one’s car). They are necessary as a layer on top of the community-generated marks because individuals may have different interests than the average of community (not everyone wants to go to the same locations on the trails). Because the blazes map to specific locations (cognitively or literally), while path-wear maps only to the most commonly visited locations, the blazes are the ultimate authority.