Finding one's way in Hang Hau: A pilot study with virtual reality and field experiments

Wayfinding involves orienting oneself and finding routes to destinations, supporting independent mobility. In cities such as Hong Kong, pedestrian routes connect indoor and outdoor spaces across multiple levels. Frequent building and floor transitions can make orientation difficult. However, how spatial configuration shapes wayfinding behaviour and performance in continuous multilevel indoor-outdoor networks remains less well understood. This pilot study examines wayfinding across these transitions and compares real-world and virtual navigation. A virtual reality environment and field experiments were developed in Hang Hau, with six participants per setting completing multilevel indoor-outdoor tasks. Routes, task times and reorientation were recorded and related to spatial configuration and visibility. The results showed that destination searches in both settings involved reorientation at building connections. Among participants visiting the same destinations in the same order, the first search took longer than either subsequent search. Return journeys in both settings included repeated floor transitions and route revisits. Compared with the field participant completing this destination sequence, virtual participants had a similar median search time (14.0 versus 15.1 minutes), but five of six took longer to return. Cognitive maps from the virtual and real-world groups showed similar building layouts and connections. Among virtual participants, exploratory analysis of pre-task questionnaires suggested potential associations between stronger route-memory endorsement and shorter initial searches (ρ = −0.93), and between stronger mental-map endorsement and shorter returns (ρ = −0.84). These associations were not consistently reproduced in field records. These findings identify the layout and visual clarity of connections between buildings and floors as priorities for supporting wayfinding throughout multilevel indoor-outdoor journeys.