Accessible Design for Varied Sensory Wayfinding in Virtual Spaces

Mason, Zach and Lindley, Joseph and Coulton, Paul (2025) Accessible Design for Varied Sensory Wayfinding in Virtual Spaces. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

The research within this thesis is, in of itself an example of the power of Research through Design (RtD). It began as an introspective exploration around how virtual wayfinding systems could provide an enjoyable sense of togetherness during the COVID-19 pandemic, evolving into an exploration of others, considering how designing wayfinding experiences with their unique needs in mind can provide far greater accessibility, legibility, togetherness, and immersion. This research, enacted through the process of designing and redesigning, is a window into the research process I began long before my PhD, and one I intend to continue after its concluding statements. Researching ‘Accessible Design for Varied Sensory Wayfinding in Virtual Spaces', this thesis unearths that while legibility and accessible design are inherently intertwined, universal legibility in virtual wayfinding is never truly achievable due to people's varying sensory bandwidths, digital experience and intended usage. This research is both an exploration of wayfinding, and a wayfinding journey itself, demonstrated through its intentional drifting methods and wayfinding focused research aims respectively. Conveyed across three specific sections – focusing on over-specificity, ambiguity, and legibility through accessibility – this thesis uses wayfinding games as a vessel for research exploration throughout. Section zero lays the foundations of this research journey, outlining the methods, epistemologies and designs which inspired and were enacted throughout the three following sections. Level 1 is often where games really begin (after the tutorial). To pay homage to this and highlight that section 1 is where my data chapters begin (and that the section before is really the foundations to it) I labelled the preceding section to it as 0. Section one focuses on over-specificity and documents a process of learning how to design virtual spaces that involve wayfinding, before highlighting that its largely game-centric underpinning would benefit from broader consideration of people and their understandings of virtual spaces. Section two extends this thinking by exploring the design of virtual public spaces intended for general audiences, created during the pandemic. It looks at how game-like interactive systems collide with design patterns from general purpose video conferencing to create ambiguous and hard to navigate spaces, especially for those with visual impairments. The third section explores legibility within virtual wayfinding, using the design and development of an audio-only game to uncover how accessibility might improve virtual wayfinding more generally and what the limits of non-visual wayfinding are within generically designed hardware. The final concluding section questions what this explorative journey has taught me, and what within it might be of use to others. Finally, it examines how future research might begin to erode the limitations of non-visual virtual wayfinding caused by generic hardware's sensory bandwidth limits. These sections can broadly be broken down into these research questions: 0. How can we unpack the history of virtual wayfinding design? 1. What is the design of virtual wayfinding spaces with current tools like? 2. How do we design virtual wayfinding spaces for maximum accessibility? 3. How could virtual wayfinding spaces be made more accessible? 4. Is equitable access to virtual space fixable by hardware redesign?