Investigating the effects of mobile navigation services and paper maps on the spatial knowledge acquisition of pedestrians in an indoor environment

Abstract

Several studies were conducted to explore the effects of mobile navigation services and paper maps on the spatial knowledge acquisition of pedestrians in the outdoor environment. Findings from the outdoor environment showed that paper maps are better preferred to mobile navigation services when one needs to acquire spatial knowledge. The main aim of this research was to explore the effects of mobile navigation services and paper maps on the spatial knowledge acquisition of pedestrians. Other specific objectives were to explore the efficiency of navigation with paper maps and mobile navigation services. Unlike other researches, this study was undertaken in the indoor environment. The study recruited 20 participants and divided them equally into two groups (paper map group, and mobile navigation services group) to undertake a navigation exercise in the Centrum Galerie of Dresden, Germany. The result of the study showed that there is the tendency of those who use mobile navigation services to find their locations or complete a navigation route faster than those who used paper maps. With the aspect to testing spatial knowledge acquisition of participants, the result from this experiment revealed no significant difference between the two groups to conclude that paper maps are better for acquiring spatial knowledge than mobile navigation services. However, there is the tendency that paper maps could be better than mobile navigation services in acquiring spatial knowledge.