The effect of map orientation on wayfinding

Wayfinding is a term used to describe navigational problem solving. There are a number of factors on a map that can effect wayfinding ability. This experiment studied three variables; the complexity of the map, the orientation of the map, and certain cartographical features of the map on wayfinding ability. We predicted that there would be a significant main effect for all three variables, and a significant interaction effect between all three. Participants were given a map with a starting point and destination, they were asked to look at the map until they planned a route from their starting point to their destination, then they were asked to return the map and walk to the destination. Tobii eye tracking software was used to measure eye movements. Results supported that there was a significant main effect for the complexity of the map. There were also two two-way interaction effects. The results imply that participants spent significantly more time looking at the complex building

Cityscape protection using VR and eye tracking technology

Abstract(#br)The traditional method for reconstructing cityscape relies greatly on the subjective judgment of designers, which makes the cityscape simple and homogenized. This paper aims to propose a new integrated approach to protect and design cityscape based on virtual reality (VR) and eye tracking technology. Through the integration and quantification of the eye tracking data and the protocol analysis data in the VR environment, this research has revealed the mechanism of identifying the cityscape features, and discovered the differences in the perception of the cityscape features by different people, thus proposing the multi-cultural integrated strategy for protecting cityscape. This research is of great significance for building a human-oriented scientific planning and protection method and promoting the application of cutting-edge digital technology in the field of smart city governance

Virtual Field Studies: Conducting Studies on Public Displays in Virtual Reality

Field studies on public displays can be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. We investigate the feasibility of using virtual reality (VR) as a test-bed to evaluate deployments of public displays. Specifically, we investigate whether results from virtual field studies, conducted in a virtual public space, would match the results from a corresponding real-world setting. We report on two empirical user studies where we compared audience behavior around a virtual public display in the virtual world to audience behavior around a real public display. We found that virtual field studies can be a powerful research tool, as in both studies we observed largely similar behavior between the settings. We discuss the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of using virtual reality to conduct field studies, and provide lessons learned from our work that can help researchers decide whether to employ VR in their research and what factors to account for if doing so