Wayfinding with a GPS-based mobile navigation system: A comparison with maps and direct experience

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of a Global Positioning System (GPS)-based mobile navigation system in comparison to paper maps and direct experience of routes, by focusing on the user's wayfinding behavior and acquired spatial knowledge. Based on information received from one of these three media, participants walked six routes finding the way to goals. Results showed that GPS users traveled longer distances and made more stops during the walk than map users and direct-experience participants. Also, GPS users traveled more slowly, made larger direction errors, drew sketch maps with poorer topological accuracy, and rated wayfinding tasks as more difficult than direct-experience participants. Characteristics of navigation with these three learning media and possible reasons for the ineffectiveness of the GPS-based navigation system are discussed.

Introduction

People engage in various kinds of spatial behavior in their daily lives. One of the most frequently encountered examples is planning a route and moving through space to a destination. This behavior, called navigation, may be considered a straightforward and effortless task since it is so common, but it involves multilevel cognitive processing and thus has attracted much theoretical and practical interest from researchers in many fields (e.g., Allen, 1999; Klippel, Tappe, Kulik, & Lee, 2005; Montello, 2005; Timpf, 2002; Winter, 2003). Importantly, finding the way in the environment and moving freely between places is, at least for some people, a difficult and effortful task, as the ability to comprehend the layout of the environment shows large individual differences (Allen, Kirasic, Dobson, Long, & Beck, 1996; Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa, & Lovelace, 2006; Ishikawa & Montello, 2006).

In successful navigation or wayfinding, people first need to orient themselves in space, namely to know where they are (location) and in which direction they are facing (heading). And then they need to plan a route with an understanding of where a destination is located. Finally, they execute the planned route to the destination. In all these three stages, people access stored knowledge about the surrounding space (internal representations), or refer to navigational aids such as maps (external representations), or do both (Fig. 1).

Traditionally, maps have played major roles in conveying spatial information and guiding people around in space. Recently, many kinds of navigational aids have been developed (e.g., Hightower & Borriello, 2001; Loomis, Golledge, & Klatzky, 2001). In particular, with the advent of advanced information technologies, devices equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers are now recognized as a promising tool for providing positional information, at least where accurate readings of satellite signals are possible (Shoval & Isaacson, 2006).

About map learning, research has shown that maps facilitate configurational (or two-dimensional) understanding of the represented space, compared to direct experience of the space. At the same time, knowledge acquired from maps is tied to the orientation in which the maps were viewed (i.e., orientation-specific), and so it is effortful to imagine views from different perspectives (Roskos-Ewoldsen, McNamara, Shelton, & Carr, 1998; Sholl, 1988; Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth, 1982). Research has also shown that using maps in the field, which requires understanding the relationships between the map, the represented space, and the self, is not an easy task for children and even for adults (Liben, Kastens, & Stevenson, 2002). Liben et al. pointed out that although there is a large body of literature on map learning, systematic studies of map use in the real world have been very few.

With respect to navigational aids, various presentation formats of spatial information have been developed, including verbal navigational directions, static maps, interactive maps, 3-D visualizations, animations, and virtual environments (see Montello, Waller, Hegarty, & Richardson, 2004, for a review). Some studies compared the effectiveness of different presentation formats. Streeter, Vitello, and Wonsiewicz (1985) compared the effectiveness of a route map and taped verbal instructions for guiding drivers in an unfamiliar environment. They found that their carefully constructed verbal instructions were better than the route map in terms of travel time and distance and the number of navigation errors. Coors, Elting, Kray, and Laakso (2005) compared 2-D maps and 3-D visualizations as a means of presenting route instructions on mobile devices. Their participants located their positions and reached destinations faster with 2-D maps than with 3-D visualizations. Dillemuth (2005) compared an aerial photograph and a generalized map as representations for a handheld navigational device, and showed that the latter yielded faster travel speed and fewer navigation errors than the former. Despite these past attempts in the literature, more empirical research on the effectiveness of different types of navigational aids is needed.

In this study, we aim to examine the effectiveness of a mobile navigation system in comparison to paper maps and direct experience, by focusing on the user's wayfinding behavior and acquired spatial knowledge. The navigation system used in this study was a cellular phone equipped with a GPS receiver. On its small screen, a map of the surrounding area was shown and the user's current position and a route to a destination were indicated, being dynamically updated as the user moved in space. The paper maps used in this study showed the locations of a starting point and a goal, but not a route to the goal.

The mobile navigation system and the paper maps intended to assist the user in the three stages of navigation illustrated in Fig. 1. On both the GPS-screen map and the paper map, the user's position was indicated, but the user needed to understand the direction in which they were facing, that is, to align the map with the surrounding space, either physically or mentally. But navigation with these two media was different in two respects. First, with the GPS-based navigation system, once being oriented in space, the user only needed to follow the route shown on the screen (i.e., to see that the current position shown on the screen would not go off the indicated route); in contrast, map users needed to update their positions mentally in relation to the surrounding space. Second, the GPS-based navigation system presented information about routes in a piecemeal fashion, that is, the current position and route were dynamically updated, and the entire route from the starting point to the goal was not always shown on the same screen; whereas the paper map showed the starting point and the goal together embedded in a larger area of the surrounding space. A major objective of this study was to look at how these differences would affect people's navigation and spatial understanding.

To do that, we compared navigation with the GPS-based mobile system and the maps to navigation based on experience of walking routes accompanied by a person. In this direct-experience condition, participants first learned each route guided by an experimenter, and then followed the route from the starting point to the goal by themselves. Put differently, we took performance by participants in this condition as a baseline, and examined whether the two navigational aids were able to help people walk as if they had traveled the routes once before. To compare the effectiveness of these three learning media, we examined participants’ performance on wayfinding tasks and the accuracy of their knowledge about routes. For the former, we looked at how much distance they traveled, how fast they reached the goals, and how often they stopped on the way to the goals. For the latter, we looked at the accuracy of configurational and sequential understanding of the routes.