Invisible in Plain Sight: Being Unconsciously Guided by Environmental Graphics -focused on doctoral dissertation in Korea-

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As signage has been a part of daily life for centuries, society has grown so familiar with it that people find themselves following it and its instructions unconsciously, often even without considering its physical appearance. One of the main goals of this paper is to provide more information about the psychological processes the brain undergoes while identifying environmental signage. Akin, this paper will provide an overview and further understanding of what factors in the process of wayfinding are noticed and go unnoticed by the general population.
In addition, this paper’s extensive research evaluates reasons humanity is incapable to recognize certain stimuli while navigating or following a spatial task. Following the research, it is believed that as we have been exposed to signage ever since we can remember, our brain, being so accustomed to reading it, does not undergo complex processing. In this paper, signage has been approached in an aesthetic and neuroscientific way. Research from this paper encompasses how the brain reacts when it comes across familiar stimuli, its incapability to focus on more than one object, and memory retainment in the ventral and dorsal pathways. Based on the conducted research, unconscious wayfinding through signage does come down to these three factors: incapability to focus on more than one stimuli, incapability to recognize familiar stimuli, and dorsal pathway dominance. Most importantly, we have concluded that the dorsal pathway dominance seems to play the most significant role in the process of unconscious wayfinding.
Through this study, designers can benefit by understanding the cognitive processes that the brain undergoes when encountering signage in complex street environments. By doing so they can develop designs that improve those environments and reduce cognitive overload. This in return would provide society with a less stressful form of navigation.

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