The Role of Color and Voronoi Patterns on Wayfinding Performance and Anxiety in a Virtual Healthcare Environment

Wayfinding and orientation systems are important in today’s complex interiors, especially in healthcare environments, where effective wayfinding is crucial. Effective wayfinding reduces individuals’ anxiety by positively enhancing their overall experience. Visual cues in the design of interiors play an important role in how people perceive their environment and use this information. This study investigates the influence of color and Voronoi pattern cues on route- and survey-based wayfinding performance and individuals’ anxiety levels in a virtual healthcare environment, focusing on their role as visual cues supporting spatial cognition. For this purpose, six virtual healthcare environments with three color cues (yellow, blue, and gray) and three Voronoi pattern cues (V 300 , V 900 , V 2700 ) were created. The Voronoi pattern cues varied in point density, representing low (V 300 ), medium (V 900 ), and high density (V 2700 ) patterns. A total of 180 participants were recruited for the experiment. A route replication task assessed wayfinding performance. The findings demonstrated that yellow and blue cues positively affected wayfinding performance; however, gray cues negatively affected wayfinding performance. Although Voronoi pattern cues did not significantly differ between the groups, mean ranks demonstrated that the medium density Voronoi (V 900 ) cue showed a more efficient wayfinding performance than the low and high density Voronoi pattern cues. Moreover, the findings on hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that cue type and spatial ability significantly predicted survey-based wayfinding performance, while gender significantly predicted both route- and survey-based wayfinding performance.