The role of captivation and sensation in pleasurable experience to enhance wayfinding process

Many factors have influenced the livability of a city; one of them is a pleasant environment. By examining the activities and the points of reference in public spaces as well as their influence on the visitors’ behaviors, this paper aims to explore pleasurable experience in public spaces as a potential way to create easy and exciting wayfinding schemes for the visitors. The methods employed for analysis are based on the theories of Passini, Costello and Edmond, and Berlyne. The data are collected through active observation, mapping, and picture taking at the Jakarta Old Town (also known as Kota Tua Jakarta) on the weekends, when public activity is the most frequent. This paper reveals that the pleasurable experience that helps the visitors’ wayfinding is mostly derived from the visual aspects involving human activities. These visual aspects provide positive feedback to the visitors, such as the constructed meaning to a related place by stimulating captivation and sensation of the involved subjects.