Topophobia

I'm staring into the abyss of Google maps tonight trying to plan carefully for a complicated multi-leg car journey I'm going to have to take tomorrow.  I'm zooming in and out of the map, trying to imagine how some of the different critical choices I will need to make will look from the ground.  It's something we struggle with -- the conversion from an overhead or plan view to an on-the-ground street view.  But I'm struggling with a greater problem as well, and its one that has come up a few times in recent interviews -- our primal fear of disorientation.  There's no doubt at all that there are times when this fear is completely justified.  If you're hiking the Appalachian Trail and you find yourself off the beaten path, your concern for your well-being is justified.  Similarly, if you've just landed at O'Hare Airport for the first time and you have to make your way from Gate C16 to Gate M5 in 15 minutes to make a flight, you'd better have a good pair of running shoes and a keen eye for signs.  But there are some parts of our lives where we don't have those kinds of severe constraints.  Tomorrow I have to find myself at a particular latitude and longitude at one particular point in the day (else there's going to be one p.o.'d radio producer who won't speak to me again).  After that, what I plan to do is to seek out some refreshing green vistas so that I can grab myself a few hours of restoration.  This isn't quite as easy as it sounds in a built-up area like Southern Ontario, but I'm not looking for the Adirondacks here -- a few acres of woods and, if I'm lucky, some water will do nicely.  So what I could do is just point myself west after my radio gig and follow my nose and my instincts.  Instead what I'm doing is scrutinizing aerial maps for likely looking clumps of vegetation and water. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I think that as we have more and more aids to navigation, more and more of us are finding it a little difficult to let go of that primal fear of being lost.  Maybe that's what's going on here.  For thousands of years our DNA has grown up with these protective mechanisms that equate disorientation with death, so it seems unavoidable that we have this little frisson of fear when we realize we don't know exactly where we are.  And technology feeds that need.  I argue all the time for the adoption of a more playful relationship with space.  I want people to just let themselves be led by those deep hidden impulses whenever they can be, because I think that's the way we can all begin to understand not only how spaces affect how we think and feel, but what kinds of spaces we actually want in our built world.  What feels good?  What works?  Yet her I am sitting up a bit past my bedtime plotting routes and worrying about where I'll be and when I'll be there.  I think what I'd like to have is a GPS with a sense of humour.  "Oh, did I say left back there?" she'd chuckle with a wry little silicon smirk on her smooth face.  "Oops.  Sorry.  I'll try to get it right next time.  I just get so distracted with all these satellites chattering at me, ya know? Why don't we just roll down the window and breath together."  I need a subversive machine to derail my obsessive need to be here right now.  I'm sure it'll all be just fine.  And if none of you ever hear from me again, just imagine me wandering off into a lovely green vista somewhere west of Toronto.  It'll all work out.

Comments

[Mark]

The point you make in several of your posts about critical wayfinding vs. the potential of discovery is a good one. It speaks to the need for wayfinding elements to be apparent when you need them, and transparent when you don't. The design of the experience is critical to the outcome: think of IKEA that forces you to walk through ALL the displays before exiting the building. But then again, if you've got time, it makes for an interesting and, for IKEA, potentially lucrative experience.

Whereas in a hospital setting, we've heard horror stories of EMS teams unable to find an Emergency entrance in the wee hours, running through hospital halls with a patient on a gurney - clearly wayfinding was critical to survival here (the patient made it, BTW).

I'd like your thoughts on how humans behave situationally, and how we can design appropriate tools to meet them where they need information, either in cyber- or meatspace. Lay over top of that generational expectations, and there are a variety of tools that can be brought to bear.