Abstract
Cardinal directions are presented as visual information for guidance and leading. The purpose of this study is to clarify the elements of design for an intuitive better understanding of cardinal directions. First, current cardinal directions were collected from the literature and field studies, and components of design that should be considered when drawing cardinal directions were extracted. Then, using the four types of cardinal directions based on design components as the stimulus, the perspicuity of each diagram was analyzed through paired comparison method. As a result of the integrated evaluation of four types of cardinal directions, the use of the letter N meaning the north direction in any of the types was proved to lead to better understanding. However, depending on the type of cardinal directions, the appropriate state of design element that could help the audience to understand differed. Specifically, if the pointer only indicated north, it was answered that it would be better to understand to display only the letter N, but if there were four pointers indicating four directions, it would be better to display all the four directions. In other words, it will be optimal if the design elements and displayed characters combine appropriately depending on the respective direction number. In addition, since excessive simplification comes to reduce the perspicuity instead, it is required to denote the necessary character information for orientation.
