Sketch maps and verbal descriptions in structuring space

This paper reports the preliminary results of a study that aims at designing an intelligent navigation system providing automated scene descriptions and effective directions for a wayfinder. In general, there are two ways for humans to communicate about a route and its surroundings, which are verbal descriptions and graphic depictions (for instance sketch maps). Spatial preposition in language and spatial arrangement of depicted objects reflect how humans select and localise spatial objects relating to a route in navigation. This information is critical to the development of an effective cognitive model for an intelligent navigation system. An experiment including two different sizes of environments was carried out. Participants were asked to provide route instructions using both sketch maps and verbal directions. The comparisons of the two types of route instructions focus on spatial disposition and are based on the linguistic conceptual framework proposed by Talmy. The results demonstrate the basic distinctions of geometry and spatial relation in structuring a walking space

Spatial knowledge acquisition in the process of navigation: A review

Spatial cognition has become an increasingly important area of study since it represents a major type of human knowledge with considerable practical significance. The general assumption is that people’s spatial knowledge forms people’s spatial behaviour, such as navigation, in the environment. However, there are some critical issues within this area, including: how such knowledge is represented and organised, the mechanisms by which it is activated, and the elementary and higher-level cognitive processes that function upon the knowledge base to produce new knowledge as well as the factors that are influential on acquiring spatial knowledge. The theories regarding spatial knowledge acquisitions have attempted to address these issues. This paper discusses these issues by reviewing the literature. As such, the paper firstly provides the research background on spatial knowledge acquisition and the theories of spatial knowledge development. Secondly, the paper debates the main factors affecting acquiring and forming knowledge about the environment. In doing that, the effects of two main factors are discussed: 1) the means of spatial knowledge acquisition (direct experience, physical map, and mobile maps), and 2) the role of different properties of physical environment

Spatial knowledge acquisition and mobile maps: The role of environmental legibility

The legibility of an environment (i.e. the ease with which a navigator can comprehend its structure) is a fundamental component of urban design, and is related to navigational success in the users of a space. The ascendency of mobile mapping solutions, however, means that legibility could potentially play an increasingly smaller role, where navigators may no longer be required to attend to their surroundings in order to make navigational decisions. To address whether legibility might also modulate the environmental knowledge of mobile map users, we conducted a real-world navigation study where participants were required to navigate to a series of key landmarks in a novel urban city centre. One group navigated using mobile mapping technology, whereas the other group planned their own routes on the basis of the information present in the environment. Participants were then required to produce a sketch map of their route as an assay of their topographical mental representation of the space. Confirming previous findings by other researchers, our quantitative analyses revealed that mobile map users had a poorer mental representation of the environment, compared to the self-experience group. However, further analysis revealed that mobile map users were nevertheless affected by environmental legibility, and experienced greater difficulty with path and nodes (i.e. intersections) that were of greater complexity. This may reflect the demands of relating map information to its real-world referents, and carries implications for urban design that can mitigate against the variety of navigational experiences that take place within it

Personal Wayfinding Assistance

We are traveling many different routes every day. In familiar environments it is easy for us to find our ways. We know our way from bedroom to kitchen, from home to work, from parking place to office, and back home at the end of the working day. We have learned these routes in the past and are now able to find our destination without having to think about it. As soon as we want to find a place beyond the demarcations of our mental map, we need help. In some cases we ask our friends to explain us the way, in other cases we use a map to find out about the place. Mobile phones are increasingly equipped with wayfinding assistance. These devices are usually at hand because they are handy and small, which enables us to get wayfinding assistance everywhere where we need it. While the small size of mobile phones makes them handy, it is a disadvantage for displaying maps. Geographic information requires space to be visualized in order to be understandable. Typically, not all information displayed in maps is necessary. An example are walking ways in parks for car drivers, they are they are usually no relevant route options. By not displaying irrelevant information, it is possible to compress the map without losing important information. To reduce information purposefully, we need information about the user, the task at hand, and the environment it is embedded in. In this cumulative dissertation, I describe an approach that utilizes the prior knowledge of the user to adapt maps to the to the limited display options of mobile devices with small displays. I focus on central questions that occur during wayfinding and relate them to the knowledge of the user. This enables the generation of personal and context-specific wayfinding assistance in the form of maps which are optimized for small displays. To achieve personalized assistance, I present algorithmic methods to derive spatial user profiles from trajectory data. The individual profiles contain information about the places users regularly visit, as well as the traveled routes between them. By means of these profiles it is possible to generate personalized maps for partially familiar environments. Only the unfamiliar parts of the environment are presented in detail, the familiar parts are highly simplified. This bears great potential to minimize the maps, while at the same time preserving the understandability by including personally meaningful places as references. To ensure the understandability of personalized maps, we have to make sure that the names of the places are adapted to users. In this thesis, we study the naming of places and analyze the potential to automatically select and generate place names. However, personalized maps only work for environments the users are partially familiar with. If users need assistance for unfamiliar environments, they require complete information. In this thesis, I further present approaches to support uses in typical situations which can occur during wayfinding. I present solutions to communicate context information and survey knowledge along the route, as well as methods to support self-localization in case orientation is lost

Wayfinding Situations

Wayfinding, which is the task of getting from some origin to a destination, is one of the primary spatial problems humans encounter in everyday life. When we wayfind, we act in the environment based on the structure and features of the environment, set against a background of knowledge which is generally understood as having visual characteristics. As mobile and wireless technologies proliferate in urban space it can be considered as having an existence in terms of several spaces, those of places that make up our direct perceptual experience and those of the digital devices and networks that facilitate communication, which are primarily non-visual in nature. This thesis will extend existing work on perception and action in urban space to investigate the role of mobile and ubiquitous technologies in wayfinding and environmental legibility, or more literally how we orientate and find our way in space when we experience it both with and through technology. In order to do this, the research takes the approach of considering wayfinding as a situated activity that takes place against a rich and articulated background of experiences and social connections. Through a series of empirical studies the concept of wayfinding situations is explored from two different perspectives. The first study investigates the relationship between an individual and technology as they act in environmental settings, by comparing learning for a spatial task depending on whether the individual accesses a map or a mobile map to make judgements. The second study seeks to understand the relationship between individual and environment as they act in technological settings, and focuses on the perception and action in space as affected by wireless technologies. The combined outcome of these two empirical studies provides the basis for the definition of a richer and more differentiated concept of wayfinding situations. This informs the final stage of the research in which an applied response is proposed to supporting wayfinding in a specific urban scenario, where the aim is to embed the technology into the spatial setting.Eine der grundlegenden Arten, wie wir die Welt wahrnehmen, ist die räumliche Wahrnehmung: Die physische Gestalt und Erscheinung unserer Umgebung ist der Schlüssel für unsere Handlungen und Wahrnehmungen darin. Das Aufkommen von Kommunikationstechnologien hat den Charakter der visuellen Präsenz im Alltag wesentlich beeinflusst, so dass das Bild, das der Einzelne von der Stadt hat (Lynch 1965), das er benutzt, um sich im städtischen Raum zurechtzufinden und zu orientieren, nicht länger ausschließlich auf physische Elemente und Strukturen beschränkt ist. Bei dem Versuch, die räumliche Erfahrung in zunehmend vermittelten Umgebungen zu entflechten, besteht der Bedarf, zu überdenken, wie wir in räumlichen Situationen denken, handeln und interagieren. In diesem Kontext bietet uns der Bereich der Wegfindung eine Möglichkeit, zu verstehen and darauf zu reagieren, wie wir im Raum handeln und uns zurechtfinden. Die Wegfindung ist eine zielorientierte, gelenkte und motivierte Handlung (Golledge 1999). Menschen benutzen unterschiedliche Wegfindungsstrategien, je nach ihrem eigenen individuellen räumlichen Bewusstsein und nach ihrer Kenntnis der Umgebung, durch die sie reisen. Wahrnehmung und Handlung im Raum werden teilweise durch unsere Fähigkeit ermöglicht, auf Denkschemata des Raumes zu reagieren (z. B. Siegel and White 1975, Tversky 1993). Wenn wir uns in der städtischen Umgebung bewegen und auf motivierte Art handeln, eignen wir uns Kenntnisse über sie an, die in geistige Repräsentationen umgewandelt werden. Diese Repräsentationen können abgerufen werden, um während des Navigierens Entscheidungen zu treffen; aber wir benutzen außerdem grafische Repräsentationen, wie Karten und mobile Karten, zur Unterstützung. Unterstützung in Form von Papierkarten wird zunehmend durch dynamische Karten verdrängt, die mithilfe von mobilen Vorrichtungen mit GPS arbeiten. Da solche Technologien es dem Einzelnen ermöglichen, Kenntnisse abzuladen, sind wir der Ansicht, dass ein Lernprozess über die Umgebung während dieser Aufgabe nicht gefördert wird. Die kognitiven Fähigkeiten Einzelner werden als solche nicht unbedingt von den derzeitigen Interaktionsmodellen solcher Anwendungen unterstützt. Zur weitergehenden Untersuchung dieses Themas beschreibt die erste Phase unserer Forschung eine Studie, die die Kenntnisaneignung bei einer Anzahl von räumlichen Aufgaben vergleicht, je nachdem, ob der Teilnehmer Zugang zu einer Papierkarte oder einer mobilen Karte hatte. Die zweite Phase unserer empirischen Arbeit bemüht sich um das Verständnis dessen, wie Einzelne die räumliche Situation wahrnehmen, wenn sie in Kommunikationstechnologie gebettet ist und untersucht den Fall „drahtlose Netzwerke“. Diese Ergebnisse werden dann in einer Zusammenfassung dargestellt, die sich bemüht, Wegfindungssituationen zu charakterisieren. Sie werden dann als Grundlage für das Design einer Anwendung genutzt, die solche Wegfindungssituationen innerhalb spezifischer städtischer Situationen unterstützt

Advanced Location-Based Technologies and Services

Since the publication of the first edition in 2004, advances in mobile devices, positioning sensors, WiFi fingerprinting, and wireless communications, among others, have paved the way for developing new and advanced location-based services (LBSs). This second edition provides up-to-date information on LBSs, including WiFi fingerprinting, mobile computing, geospatial clouds, geospatial data mining, location privacy, and location-based social networking. It also includes new chapters on application areas such as LBSs for public health, indoor navigation, and advertising. In addition, the chapter on remote sensing has been revised to address advancements

Tactile Displays for Pedestrian Navigation

Existing pedestrian navigation systems are mainly visual-based, sometimes with an addition of audio guidance. However, previous research has reported that visual-based navigation systems require a high level of cognitive efforts, contributing to errors and delays. Furthermore, in many situations a person’s visual and auditory channels may be compromised due to environmental factors or may be occupied by other important tasks. Some research has suggested that the tactile sense can effectively be used for interfaces to support navigation tasks. However, many fundamental design and usability issues with pedestrian tactile navigation displays are yet to be investigated. This dissertation investigates human-computer interaction aspects associated with the design of tactile pedestrian navigation systems. More specifically, it addresses the following questions: What may be appropriate forms of wearable devices? What types of spatial information should such systems provide to pedestrians? How do people use spatial information for different navigation purposes? How can we effectively represent such information via tactile stimuli? And how do tactile navigation systems perform? A series of empirical studies was carried out to (1) investigate the effects of tactile signal properties and manipulation on the human perception of spatial data, (2) find out the effective form of wearable displays for navigation tasks, and (3) explore a number of potential tactile representation techniques for spatial data, specifically representing directions and landmarks. Questionnaires and interviews were used to gather information on the use of landmarks amongst people navigating urban environments for different purposes. Analysis of the results of these studies provided implications for the design of tactile pedestrian navigation systems, which we incorporated in a prototype. Finally, field trials were carried out to evaluate the design and address usability issues and performance-related benefits and challenges. The thesis develops an understanding of how to represent spatial information via the tactile channel and provides suggestions for the design and implementation of tactile pedestrian navigation systems. In addition, the thesis classifies the use of various types of landmarks for different navigation purposes. These contributions are developed throughout the thesis building upon an integrated series of empirical studies.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A comparison of seeking-finding behaviours across the contexts of environmental space, paper documents, and on-screen

This thesis compares behaviour across three contrasting contexts: environmental space, paper documents, and on-screen. The behaviours examined are defined as seeking-finding behaviours: these comprise continuous, recursive sequences of choices made by an individual purposefully seeking and progressing towards a defined objective; these processes are constructive, dynamic, responsive, and interactive. Such behaviours may be more readily known as wayfinding, information-seeking, or navigating. The lack of a single term encompassing this group of behaviours is indicative of the paucity of previous research using this frame of reference. While there is discussion of seeking-finding in individual contexts, there is little comparing this behaviour between contexts, and none examining it across all three contexts. Comparing behaviours across contexts is facilitated here by the formulation of a taxonomy that creates categories of behaviour equally applicable to all three contexts. This taxonomy differentiates behaviours according to characteristics of the information driving them. In doing this, the taxonomy facilitates comparisons hitherto unrealised, and allows connections to be drawn across multiple disciplines. Behaviours in the three contexts are compared by using the taxonomy in the analysis of data from three studies of human behaviour. This analysis finds that interactions between categories of behaviour, and with the factors of individual, context, and task are complex and multi-dimensional. The conclusion is drawn that, when viewed through the lens of information source, seeking-finding behaviours are comparable across the contexts of environmental space, paper documents, and on-screen. Such comparisons can be revealing about behaviour in ways productive for both information design practice and research across several disciplines, affording new insights and connections. Furthermore, the questions that drive the taxonomy offer an approach for information designers to interrogate their choices when designing