Ralph Caspers wants to be able to orientate himself better. Can you train this in the Ikea labyrinth? Shopping scientists have known for decades: those who walk more slowly buy more. Everyone tries hard to dissuade us from taking the quickest route in shops. For example, in the supermarket the fruit is usually right at the entrance. And in furniture stores such as Ikea you are literally led through a labyrinth: always past all the departments... And because there are usually no windows, you lose your bearings pretty quickly. The most well-known "shopping labyrinth" is that of the furniture store Ikea. Ralph shows you in the video. But how can you learn to orientate yourself better in it? Research into naked mole rats could be helpful. This has examined the orientation of the small rodents in their dark burrows. Experiments have shown that the naked mole rats have an internal map in their head when they walk through their burrow. They orient themselves roughly like this: "First I went right, then left twice, then straight ahead, then right again. And that's why you take the shortest route back to the exit." And there is even a scientific term for this type of orientation: "dead reckoning". This type of navigation was particularly common in seafaring. In the video, Ralph explains how this can help you to orient yourself better in everyday life. Ralph also shows how ants, bees and dung beetles orient themselves and what vibration belts are all about to help with orientation. Chapter 0:00 Intro 1:17 Gruen effect: the longer we walk around in a store, the more we buy 4:33 The Ikea labyrinth and how the naked mole rat orientates itself in the cave 7:13 How to practice orientation (“Dead Reckoning”) Authors: Kathrin Passig, Chantal Beil, Ralph Caspers Editing and graphics: Robert Bodner (Studio Paeper) Sound design: Florian Ebrecht Realization: Ingo Knopf Editor: Monika Grebe Video, reading and crafting tips Adrian Pflug tests the orientation belt for Quarks: • How people orient themselves through technology... Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation; by Christopher Kemp, 2022 ISBN-13:‎ 978-1324005384 An interesting non-fiction book by an author who himself has almost no sense of direction and only finds out late in life that this is different for other people. Two instructions for building a compass magnetic belt yourself: ► https://www.instructables.com/How-to-... ► https://www.instructables.com/Haptic-... Our most important sources Alan Penn on Shop Floor Plan Design, Ikea, and Dark Patterns; in: 90 Percent of Everything, 2011 https://90percentofeverything.com/201... The linked lecture by Alan Penn no longer exists; there is a transcript here: https://course-building.s3-us-west-2.... The experience of new sensorimotor contingencies by sensory augmentation; in: Consciousness and Cognition, 2014 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Sensory cues and shoppers' touching behaviour: the case of IKEA; in: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 2012 https://doi.org/10.1108/0959055121121... Did you like the video? Then subscribe now to the official Quarks channel with Ralph Caspers @DimensionRalph on YouTube! Also visit the official Quarks channel on YouTube: @Quarks #quarks on Instagram: / quarks.de Quarks on Twitter: / quarkswdr Quarks on Facebook: / quarks.de #Orientation #ralphcaspers #dimensionralph