BU Research Blog

Dr Angela Gosling & Dr Jan Wiener delivered a highly engaging presentation on Wednesday 13^th May which focused on their novel research.

Dr Jan Wiener opened proceedings by discussing how we are flexible in switching between navigational strategies, in comparison to being reliant on the sun for navigating on a day to day basis as many animals are. The audience  then engaged with a 360 degree view of Bournemouth Town centre and asked simple navigational questions such as ‘where is the pier?’ as well as others. Dr Jan described about how navigation is incredibly complex and explained the reasons why and when navigation fails, leading on to how navigation can be supported. Research into Dementia friendly guidelines by PhD Mary O’malley was met with a debate of opinions between various audience members, as they offered various insights into the topic of navigation.

Dr Angela Gosling provided an interactive second half of the presentation. Audience members participated in a navigational test. This involved watching a video of a route which was being walked through in the virtual world, twisting and turning left and right. Once the video had finished, audience members were asked whether the first turn was for example ‘left’. This sparked an enjoyable debate between the audience members which resulted in a highly amusing quote to conclude this blog post from a gentleman in the audience “okay, okay! I will shut up now as I am feeling my wife elbowing me in the ribs.”