Abstract
Disorientation is an usual issue in many situations, namely during emergency into complex buildings. It may cause a lack of crucial time mainly during early evacuation stages, increasing the chance of harming. This exploratory study aims to investigate the influence of others over a personal route-choice decision during wayfinding into a complex building. A Virtual Reality-based methodology was used and a virtual hotel was adapted from Vilar [1] in order to present six T-shape intersections with two opposite corridors. Two conditions were considered, an everyday condition, that represents the occupant interaction in an ordinary situation, and an emergency condition, in which a fire occurs into the building. Virtual character was inserted in order to investigate the influence of others over a directional choice decision. Findings point to a social influence over wayfinding decisions, suggesting that it can be an important aspect to be considered by safety planners, graphical designers, architects, managers and all those related with safety into complex buildings.
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Acknowledgments
This research is supported by FCT grant n. SFRH/BPD/93993/2013.
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Vilar, E., Noriega, P., Rebelo, F., Galrão, I., Semedo, D., Graça, N. (2020). Exploratory Study to Investigate the Influence of a Third Person on an Individual Emergency Wayfinding Decision. In: Rebelo, F., Soares, M. (eds) Advances in Ergonomics in Design. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 955. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20227-9_42
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