Wayfinding and Navigation in the Outdoors Quantitative and Data Driven Development of Personas and Requirements for Wayfinding in Nature

Persona development in human-centered design processes is mostly done in a qualitative process involving procedures like interviews, focus-groups and workshops. These are methods that are criticized for being prone to biases, as not being based on rigorous empirical data and for using small and possibly non-representative populations. Quantitative approaches are an alternative or supplement to qualitative methods. Through a survey (n= 693) we have investigated how people navigate and find their way in the nature. The questionnaire contains questions on demographics, activities, and wayfinding behaviors when out in the nature. The study's aim was twofold: First we wanted to investigate the use of a quantitative approach for exploring user behaviors and attitudes when having access to a sufficiently large data material. Secondly, we wanted to provide for persona-development for wayfinding systems used in the nature. The methods applied in this study is a combination of Principal Component Analyses (PCA) and Cluster Analyses (CA). Based on these methods three factors where identified, which again lead to three clusters of respondents. The study concludes that when having access to quantitative data as we managed to have in this study, the combination of PCA and CA is an efficient and precise way to describe requirements and develop Personas. Results also indicate significant effects of demographic variables like age and gender for technology preferences. as well as for confidence in abilities when navigating and finding the way in nature.