Narrating the route: route memorability in navigation instructions augmented with narrative–results from a user study

ABSTRACTFrom oral histories to mnemonic devices, humans have an excellent ability to remember object sequences and their relationships inside of narratives. In pedestrian wayfinding, remembering landmarks and their relationships is considered key to learning routes. This research explores whether augmenting verbal route instructions with a narrative increases the memorability of a route. Narrative theory is applied as a framework to develop narrative-based navigation instructions, which were tested in a field study (N = 18). After learning a route, participants recalled the route verbally, completed a photo-based landmark sequencing task and discussed their answers. One week later, a route recognition task and a second photo-based landmark sequencing task was completed online. Results show few significant differences between the two groups when compared quantitatively. However, during interviews, the narrative group repeatedly cited the narrative when remembering the route. The results suggest that incorporating narratives into route directions can be further explored, and that some novel direction types may not be well-measured using quantitative methods. This research confirms the prowess of landmark-based instructions to facilitate route memory, contributes to the growing body of work augmenting landmark-based route directions with detailed information, and further encourages designers to consider alternate route communication methods.KEYWORDS: Narrativepedestrian wayfindingroute memorabilityfield study Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. A weak causal relationship might be said to exist: turning onto ‘Bridge street’ might be impossible without first crossing the bridge, for example, but this seems a stretch. Additionally, the user could be considered a character, but there is no guarantee of transformation, nor is navigating a non-habitual event.2. Modelling the meaning of museum stories. Remembering routes is affected by primacy and recency effects, two phenomena found in the recall sequential lists (Hilton, Wiener, and Johnson Citation2021). Items at the beginning and end of the list are more likely to be remembered than items in the middle (Baddeley Citation1999; Reisberg Citation2010). Introducing an active delay, where the user is occupied with some other task, can reduce this effect (Reisberg Citation2010).