User experience of photorealistic urban pedestrian navigation

Abstract

With advances in satellite and street-level imaging, photorealistic mobile maps have gained widespread popularity. The aim of this research was to study the user experience of mobile navigation with three different mobile maps: a traditional graphical map representation was compared to a photorealistic satellite map and a photorealistic street-level view. Nine subjects used all three visualizations in urban pedestrian navigation and gave evaluations of navigation support, user experience (AttrakDiff), task load (NASA TLX), and overall preference using questionnaire methods. The results indicated that the photorealistic maps were more stimulating to the user than the graphical map and the photorealistic street-level view also enabled more effective identification of nearby landmarks than the other map versions. However, the photorealistic maps were perceived as less pragmatic than the graphical map and the street-level view also demanded a higher task load. The graphical map was the most often preferred visualization.