Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Empirical Evidence for Context-aware Interfaces to Pedestrian Navigation Systems

  • Technical Contribution
  • Published:
KI - Künstliche Intelligenz Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

For geographical mobile search tasks it is rarely sufficient to assist users identifying what location they are currently looking for, e.g. a store, cafe or museum. Often the user needs support in being guided to a retrieved location in a physical space. This means that mobile search is strongly connected with navigation. There is a large body of work indicating that navigating towards points of interest is challenging for many people. In this work we explore how to support best this part of the task by investigating how objects in the physical world—landmarks—can be used in information systems to guide people to their desired location. We present the results of a series of eye tracking studies on the orientation behavior of persons executing indoor navigation tasks. The main finding of the studies is that the contextual relevance and the function of a landmark for completing the task efficiently matters more than the context-free salience of the same landmark. The findings have implications for the design of mobile search systems that support geographical search tasks as they lead to new context-adaptive strategies for navigation systems to explain routes. We provide evidence that even the interface has to adapt its content on the state of the navigation task and the current spatial context in order to provide user- and context-adaptive intuitive interaction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Kluge M (2009) Fußgängernavigation—reality view: entwicklung und Implementierung eines auf erweiterter Realität basierenden Navigationssystems für Fußgänger auf mobilen Geräten. Vermessung Brandenburg 2:60–69

    Google Scholar 

  2. Testbericht: 7 Navi-Apps für Smartphones im Test. online (2012). http://www.connect.de/testbericht/7-navi-apps-fuer-smartphones-im-test-1238322.html. Last access on Nov 11th, 2012

  3. Bienk S, Kattenbeck M, Ludwig B, Müller M, Ohm C (2013) I want to view it my way: interfaces to mobile maps should adapt to the user’s orientation skills. In: MUM, p 34

  4. Möller A, Kranz M, Huitl R, Diewald S, Roalter L (2012) A mobile indoor navigation system interface adapted to vision-based localization. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, MUM ’12, pp 4:1–4:10. ACM, New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1145/2406367.2406372. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2406367.2406372

  5. Li L, Wang GS, Goh W, Lim JH, Tan C (2013) A wearable cognitive vision system for navigation assistance in indoor environment. In: Lee M, Hirose A, Hou ZG, Kil RM (eds) ICONIP (3), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8228, pp 249–257, Springer

  6. Xu Q, Li L, Lim JH, Tan C, Mukawa M, Wang G (2014) A wearable virtual guide for context-aware cognitive indoor navigation. In: Proceedings of MobileHCI 2014, p to be published

  7. Ishikawa T, Fujiwara H, Imai O, Okabe A (2008) Wayfinding with a gps-based mobile navigation system: a comparison with maps and direct experience. J Environ Psychol 28(1):74–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Mast V, Jian C, Zhekova D (2012) Elaborate descriptive information in indoor route instructions. In: The 34th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, p to appear

  9. Winter S (2003) Route adaptive selection of salient features. Springer

  10. Winter S, Raubal M, Nothegger C (2004) Focalizing measures of salience for wayfinding. In: Meng L, Z. A., Reichenbacher T (eds) Map-based mobile services: theories, methods, and design implementations, pp 127–142. Springer Geosciences

  11. Sorrows ME, Hirtle SC (1999) The nature of landmarks for real and electronic spaces. In: Spatial information theory. Cognitive and computational foundations of geographic information science, pp 37–50. Springer

  12. Carmi R, Itti L (2006) Visual causes versus correlates of attentional selection in dynamic scenes. Vision Res 46(26):4333–4345

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Klippel A., Winter S (2005) Structural salience of landmarks for route directions. In: Spatial information theory, pp 347–362. Springer, Berlin

  14. Wolbers T, Hegarty M (2010) What determines our navigational abilities? Trends Cognitive Sci 14(3):138–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. May AJ, Ross T, Bayer SH, Tarkiainen MJ (2003) Pedestrian navigation aids: information requirements and design implications. Pers Ubiquitous Comp 7(6):331–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Ross T, May A, Thompson S (2004) The use of landmarks in pedestrian navigation instructions and the effects of context. In: Mobile Human-Computer Interaction-MobileHCI 2004, pp 300–304, Springer

  17. Elias B, Paelke V (2008) User-centered design of landmark visualizations. In: Map-based mobile services, pp 33–56. Springer

  18. Caduff D, Timpf S (2008) On the assessment of landmark salience for human navigation. Cognitive process 9(4):249–267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Münzer S, Stahl C (2011) Learning routes from visualisations for indoor wayfinding: presentation modes and individual differences. Spatial Cognition Comp 11(4):281–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Nurmi P, Salovaara A., Bhattacharya S, Pulkkinen T, Kahl G (2011) Influence of landmark-based navigation instructions on user attention in indoor smart spaces. In: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, pp 33–42, ACM

  21. Möller A, Diewald S, Roalter L, Stockinger T, Huitl R, Hilsenbeck S, Kranz M (2013) Navigating indoors using decision points. In: Moreno-Diaz R, Pichler F, Quesada-Arencibia A (eds) Computer Aided Systems Theory - EUROCAST 2013, vol 8112., Lecture Notes in Computer ScienceSpringer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 450–457

  22. Röser F, Krumnack A, Hamburger K, Knauff M (2012) A four factor model of landmark salience - a new approach. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM), pp 82–87. Berlin

  23. Montello D, Sas C (2006) Human factors of wayfinding in navigation, pp 2003–2008. CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

  24. Lovelace KL, Hegarty M, Montello DR (1999) Elements of good route directions in familiar and unfamiliar environments. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory: cognitive and computational foundations of geographic information science, COSIT ’99, pp. 65–82. Springer, London. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=646127.681068

  25. Allen GL (2000) Principles and practices for communicating route knowledge. Appl Cogn Psychol 14(4):333–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Sokal R, Rohlf F (1981) Biometry: the principles and practice of statistics in biological research. Freeman, New York

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  27. Mast V, Jian C, Zhekova D (2012) Elaborate descriptive information in indoor route instructions. In: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, Austin

  28. Ludwig B, Bienk S, Kattenbeck M, Müller M, Ohm C, Einmal M, Glaser T, Hackl M, Oreskovich M, Schubart L (2013) Do you recognize that building’s façade? KI 27(3):241–246

    Google Scholar 

  29. Sonntag D, Toyama T (2013) Vision-based location-awareness in augmented reality applications. In: 3rd Workshop on Location Awareness for Mixed and Dual Reality. International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI-13), March 19–22, ACM Press, Santa Monica

Download references

Acknowledgments

The research presented in the paper is part of the project NADINE. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) under grant no. 19 P 12009 F.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31, D-93053, Regensburg, Germany

    Bernd Ludwig, Manuel Müller & Christina Ohm

Authors
  1. Bernd Ludwig
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Manuel Müller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Christina Ohm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bernd Ludwig.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ludwig, B., Müller, M. & Ohm, C. Empirical Evidence for Context-aware Interfaces to Pedestrian Navigation Systems. Künstl Intell 28, 271–281 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-014-0333-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-014-0333-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation