I have a terrible sense of direction and frequently struggle to know which way to head when I exit an underground station. I can use the map on my phone of course (though there are some places this wouldn’t be safe), and if it’s not nighttime or cloudy, the position of the sun helps, but I’m often 90 degrees or more out in my reckoning.
What tactics can I adopt to help me orient myself for my ongoing travel (on foot)?
I have the same issue, especially in China, where the subway stations are big, often crowded, where map apps don't work well, and I can't read any street signs.
Before you arrive download the city in google maps (or your preferred application), when you are in the station the GPS isn't reliable so you just want to know the street you want to end up on when you leave the station.
I get where you are coming from with the safety aspect. Most pickpockets or snatch and grabs are opportunistic. For them to steal your stuff they need 3 things. 1) to identify a target. 2) to actually grab your stuff 3) run away to somewhere you wont find them. You want to avoid looking at your map/phone where all 3 of these are a possibility. Personally I like walking into a shop, check my map, make a mental note of the next stage in my journey (I need to exit on xyz street, go right, walk for 5 intersections) and put it away again. If I need to check it again I'll find another shop or something similar.
This way; I don't look like a lost tourist, just a guy on his phone. People in the station will be less likely to identify me as a tourist while I'm looking at the map. It's harder to get away in the shop, thieves like several options to run to, lanes, crowds etc.
If I can't find a shop I'll duck into a doorway and try to look like something just on his phone.
Here is an answer from a Londoner who does not have a smartphone.
I go about this by memorising in advance the key features of the immediate vicinity of the station, using this version of OpenStreetMap (because it has the correct colour scheme for roads in the UK, unlike the default version) or a London A-Z paper map.
I start by identifying the main road(s) in the immediate vicinity. For example, at Baker Street station,
the biggest main road is Marylebone Road. It is, in fact, a primary route, so its directional road signs (e.g.: "Central London, 1"; "A41(N)") will have a green background (a proper map should reflect that in the way it colours the roads). But so are parts of Baker Street (the road) and Gloucester Place. So, I cannot rely on green-background destination signs alone. However, you can see that, as well as being smaller roads, Baker Street (the road) and Gloucester Place are one-way streets, so that enables me to distinguish them from Marylebone Road.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I am going to St Marylebone Parish Church. I would orientate myself as follows:
Written like that, it seems like a lot to memorise, so you may want to be a bit more selective in what you consciously try and memorise (do not underestimate your unconscious memory -- it can soak up many clues). Just ensure you have enough cues so that you can quickly and easily correct yourself if you start going the wrong way at any point. A brief memorisation for orientation purposes might run:
follow Marylebone Road (biggest road), in the direction of traffic on the parallel one-way street outside the station, then passing Allsop Place and not Baker Street (the station's namesake)
Ultimately, orientation is a skill best developed by making mistakes and recovering from them successfully using cues in your local environment. I have happily navigated my way from underground stations in cities as diverse as New York and Stockholm without resorting to technology, nor even asking for directions (ironically, the one city where I have had to ask for directions is in the country where I live, the UK... specifically, Edinburgh).
A useful trick for orienting yourself in urban areas is to look for satellite dishes on buildings. In the northern hemisphere, these will point south. In the southern hemisphere, they will point north.
Usually subway stations have numbered or lettered exits and a map of the surrounding area before you exit the station itself (though perhaps outside the fare-paid area). They will show major landmarks and typically the exits may also tell you major destinations (such as hospitals, markets etc.). It's relatively safe and low-stress to look at the map within the station, compare it with your destination and with major streets and confidently head out of the station in what you think is the correct direction. Sometimes the cell phone and/or GPS won't work within the station but if you have offline maps enabled you should be able to orient yourself.
For example, when I arrive at my usual hotel in Shenzhen, I know to exit the station from the C2 exit and make a hairpin turn back along Honggui Road. Sometimes you can find online maps of the subway stations, but not in that particular case.
I usually double-check after a couple of blocks, when I'm separated from anyone that might have been looking for clueless visitors exiting a subway station, just in case I'm turned around and walking in the incorrect direction.
The worst situation, in my experience, is when the subway station is part of a retail complex and you don't have a clearly defined path to the exits. I've run into those in China and I think Mexico City, and in both cases, I was totally disoriented by the time I reached the street. There's not a lot you can do but walk until you find some intersection with understandable street markings or landmark to orient yourself.
The other thing to keep in mind is that if things look too threatening outside, you can always retreat back into the station. I've done that twice- in Washington DC and in Seoul Korea (there was an active riot in the second case).
I'm not so confident about getting a taxi as a back-up- in some places, especially if it's rush hour, raining or you look foreign or the taxi drivers are looking for only long haul fares, you may have a bad time with that. If you can get the equivalent of an Uber (Taxify, Grab, etc) things may go more smoothly.
Of course if you have a phone with a working SIM card and access to Google Maps, you can just follow the phone and it will correct you if you're walking in the wrong direction. Usually a block or two in the wrong directly isn't a huge deal. If you don't have a VPN set up before you go to, say, China, that may not be so easy.
Almost every London Underground station has "You are here" maps on the wall, usually near the ticket machines.
Multi-exit stations have each exit marked or labelled differently, and clearly marked on the map.
On the London Underground at stations with multiple exits, they are often described (for example) "Oxford Street (North), Regent Street (West)." You will emerge close to the intersection of those two major roads, North of Oxford Street and West of Regent Street. But how to know which road is which, if you aren't familiar with London?
Bus routes can provide a clue, as can the maps on bus stops. If the nearest bus stop serves buses running from West to East, you are on the North side of Oxford street (London - we drive on the left). If it serves buses running South-North, you are on the West side of Regent Street. If you know a little London geography, the destinations on the front and rear of the buses themselves will suffice.
As for smartphone/ personal security: you can buy a nominally smart phone for sub-£40 which can orient you via GPS. I suspect you don't even need a SIM in it for the GPS-compass function to work, although you do of course need data connectivity to use Google maps. (Another £10 or thereabouts, for a month, pre-pay no contract). It's not expensive enough to worry about somebody stealing it, and street-robbers will probably recognise a crappiphone not worth stealing. An ancient smartphone bought at a Cash Converters or similar place is another even cheaper option.
Or -- what about a magnetic compass key-ring bauble? They aren't terribly accurate but they ought to let you know the difference between North and West when it's raining.
Well, anyone can get disoriented. But it's a lot easier when you have an inherent love of maps, and a desire to be well connected to the physical world as it is.
I wasn't born with a sense of orienteering. Though it is a human ability to become good at it, because when all the countryside looks alike, it's useful to know how to get back to your clan's village and stay out of the other clan's territory.
If anything, relying on other humans or Siri for navigating has blunted our senses. A lot, and especially with airplanes, places are just things we "teleport" between, we go place-???-place and nobody cares about the ??? bit.
The most important thing about map-loving is to work big. Don't even bother trying to love maps on a phone, not even a tablet, and not those horrible pages-in-a-binder Thomas Guides, those are for people who already know the lay of the land, and just need a reference for the details. You need the big old fold-out maps and the space to spread 'em out. AAA (in US, AA in UK) gives out free maps to members, and if all the maps of your metropolitan area are the same scale, you can even puzzle-fit them up on a wall for a super-map!
A map of London ought to be a staple. So you spend some time poring over the map, going out and experiencing London, looking back at the map to reconcile what you saw, round and round as a matter of habit. After a little experience, it all starts registering. You know which side of the river you're on, you recognize major roads, you look down the road and see downtown or a feature you recognize, or the way three streets intersect.
If you want to see more detail than the map can tell you, then you fire up assets like your phone maps, or Google Earth on a PC.
Extracting your smartphone from your bags then staring at a compass or map app is the best way to look lost and get your smartphone stolen.
When you exit an underground station you have a good idea of where you are, but you don't know the direction, so all you need at first is a compass.
Solution: Some suitcases have an integrated compass in the handle.
While it might not be the best compass ever, it is certainly precise enough to tell you whether you should start walking along this street or that perpendicular one.
In New York, and some other places at least, you will find Neighborhood Maps such as
http://web.mta.info/maps/neighborhoods/mn/M11_midtown_2015.pdf
That show you exactly where you will emerge from a given exit.
Most smart phones have an option to rotate the map display based on the internal compass so the map orientation matches the location. iPhone and most Android phones have this capability. NoGPS signal is required. Google for how to accomplish this.
If there is no cell connection there are map apps that will pre-download the map data for a city or country.
This is what I do after arriving by underground to a place I've never been before: I have offline maps on my phone for the city, and I've added boookmarks at home already: airport, underground station, hotel, conference location etc. I choose a random exit and go up. I get a GPS fix. I add a bookmark to the map on my phone to my current location. I walk 100 m in a random direction. I add a bookmark to the map on my phone to my current location. I look at the 2 bookmarks I've added, I look at the map, I look at the landmarks nearby, thus I get oriented.
When I return to the same underground station, chances are that I'll be using a different entrance. Before walking down, I get a GPS fix and add a bookmark to the map on my phone.
You can use Citymapper which in advance shows you the best exit for your destination. You can view it offline or take a screenshot and follow their directions. They also indicate which train carriage is best to use for your preferred exit.
