Chapter 1 Introduction
1.3. Thesis Organization
This thesis is structured as follows. In next chapter I summarize and discuss related
works in mobile navigation done by other researchers. In Chapter 3 I describe the
requirement analysis I made for TopoNav. I followed user-centered design approach
to explain the problems I attempt to solve. The implementation and evaluation are
described in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5 I discuss the conclusion and possible future
works for this research.
Chapter 2 Related Works
2.1. Turn-by-Turn Navigation System
When people travel in an unfamiliar environment, tools such as maps and
compasses were often used to help them complete the navigation and orientation tasks.
Many studies have been done and different techniques have been proposed to find the
best solution for pedestrian navigation.
Krüger et al. [4] studied on how the users acquire route and survey knowledge.
During their test, the participants were required to walk through a route with a picture
showing the right way at every intersection. After arrived at the destination, the
participants were then required to perform a recollection task recalling the locations of
every decision point. The test results show that a turn-by-turn navigation system may
reduce the amount of survey information its users collect.
Goodman et al. [5] described a turn-by-turn pedestrian navigation system for
elders. It provides users text and audio instructions with references to landmarks.
Their test participants spent significantly shorter time to complete same navigation
tasks with the proposed navigation aids than with the map. The overall navigation
workload was significantly lower and the participants got lost less often.
Based on the results of these researches, while a turn-by-turn navigation system
has advantages, it has disadvantages too. The performance of executing navigation
tasks can be improved with such a system, but the users tend to acquire less amount of
the information about their surrounding environment. This implies that if the users
have no knowledge about the surroundings, they might easily get lost when the
system suddenly malfunctioned. The accuracy of the GPS positioning feature can
affect the performance of a navigation system [6]. Even when the GPS is working as
expected, the system might still require its user to put effort in positioning himself or
herself. The GPS signal is reflected by many materials, and can be absorbed by wood
and water. Therefore, it is only more reliable for outdoor uses. It is usually not
working indoor and not reliable in forests and urban areas with tall buildings.
2.2. Image-Based Navigation
Many researchers studied the use of the photos as navigation aids in a navigation
system. Beeharee and Steed [7] described a navigation system with geo-tagged photos.
Their navigation system comes with a map view with route line and navigation
instructions, a route tab with complete route instructions, and a viewer tab shows
photos along the route. This system was then tested with and without photos. Their
results indicate that the photos had shortened the time required to complete the
navigation task and helped the users to reorient themselves more easily. The
participants used the photos to make and confirm decisions.
Hile et al, [8] described a navigation system with online geo-tagged photos. This
system has two modes - a map mode and a landmark mode. The landmark mode
shows photos of landmarks with related navigation instructions. During the test, the
participants were required to walk a route using these two modes. The test participants
found the landmarks mode useful in intersections and they would use them again.
Chen et al. [9] described a system using route videos as navigation aids. This
system provides 360-degree panoramas videos around the pre-selected landmarks
near intersections. The system displays a map of the route with thumbnails of
landmarks and a video of the route with dot moving along the path indicating the
location of the video. In addition to this, a list of navigation instructions (written
instructions and thumbnails of landmarks) is also included. They performed a test to
compare the performance of a map with videos and a map with photos. The
participants were asked to familiarize themselves with route using either the video
map or the photo map. After finished the familiarization step, the participants were
then asked to perform a virtual drive of the same route and they were asked to make
decisions on where to turn at intersections. In general, the participants performed
better with the video maps - they needed to check for instructions less often.
These researches show that photos and videos of landmarks are useful navigation
aids [24]. This method is especially useful for decision making near the intersections
and the verification of navigation choices. It should not replace the map, but to be
provided as additional geospatial information.
Chapter 3
Requirement Analysis
In Chapter 2 several related studies for mobile navigation were inspected. By
investigating the design and development methods of these apps, the decision on the
type of methodology to use in this thesis was made. In order to deliver an effective
communication of geospatial information via geolocation apps, along with the support
of technology, the needs, desires, and limitations of the end users of such systems
must be given extensive attention during the design process. An approach
User-Centered Design (UCD) fulfills these requirements, and there are an increasing
number of geolocation apps using it in their design process. I selected UCD as the
overarching methodology for this thesis.
This chapter first provides an overview of the principles of UCD. It begins with a
discussion about usability, and then several user-centered approaches are introduced.
Following on from this is a more detailed discussion about the purpose, expectations,
and research strategies of UCD.
The second part describes how UCD applied in this research. In order to create
geolocation apps with high usability, the users for such systems must be defined first.
A requirement analysis was carried out, and the user profile for the target users that
this system focusing on was created. To gain an understanding of the user’s
requirements for a geolocation app, semi-structured interviews and field-based user
shadowing were conducted. The results from these observations are included at the
end.
3.1. Fundamentals of User-Centered Design
UCD is an approach used in computer systems design. Its purpose is to address
these fundamental questions: ‘How do I understand the user?’ and ‘How do I ensure
this understanding is reflected in my system?’ [10]. In order to create a usable and
successful final product, the design process positions the end user at the center to
ensure the user can easily use the system to meet his or her needs [11]. Vredenburg et
al. defines UCD as the practices of “the active involvement of users for a clear
understanding of user and task requirements, iterative design and evaluation, and a
multidisciplinary approach” [12]. The system does not require users to adapt their
behaviors to use; instead, it is designed to support its users’ existing behaviors.
The techniques and ideas of UCD came from the early works of Gould and
Lewis (1985) [11] and Norman and Draper (1986) [13]. At that time, Gould and
Lewis proposed and discussed three basic principles for this emerging field: (1) an
early focus on understanding users and their tasks; (2) empirical measurement of
prototype by representative users; and (3) an iterative cycle of design, test and
measure and redesign. In 1988 Norman [14] further elaborated UCD and he suggested
every good design should follow these four main principles:
1. Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment.
2. Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system, the
alternative actions, and the results of actions.
3. Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system.
4. Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions;
between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is
visible and the interpretation of the system state.
In addition to this, Norman also suggested the following seven design rules are
essential to facilitate the designer’s tasks:
1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head. This principle
is based on the theory of mental models. The designer has a conceptual
model about the system, and during the use the user also develops a mental
model explaining the operation of the system. For the system to succeed, the
designer’s model must match with the user’s mental model. However, the
designer does not talk directly to the user. The designer can only
communicate with the user through the "system image”. The system image
is the designer’s materialized mental model, such as the system’s
appearance, operation, or the manuals included with it. The designer must
ensure that the system image is consistent with his or her conceptual model.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks. Tasks should be simple. Avoid requiring
difficult actions like planning and problem solving in them. Consider the
limits of the user’s short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory
(LTM). On average the user is able to remember five to nine unrelated
things at a short time. Keep the task consistent and provide mental aids for
easy retrieval of information from LTM.
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of execution and evaluation. Consider
Norman’s stages model of actions in Figure 3.1. The left side of the figure
(intention to act, sequence of actions, and execution of actions) is the
execution part. The user interface should provide information for the user to
decide which actions he or she should undertake. The right side of the figure
(perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the perception, and
evaluation of the perception) is the evaluation part. The user interface
should provide feed to show the user what can be done and what the results
are.
Figure 3.1 Norman’s stages model of actions.
4. Get the mappings right. A natural mapping that leads to immediate
understanding should be used. The representation of the control’s
functionality should be made with careful considerations of cultural
standards and physical analogies.
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial. Design the
system to make the user feel that there is only one action possible or logical
to do.
6. Design for error. Assume that the user will make errors. The system should
be designed to allow the users to recover from any possible error made.
7. When all else fails, standardize. Create a universal standard for things
cannot be explained in any logical or culturally determined way.
In 1999 an international standard ISO 13407 was release, entitled
‘Human-Centered Design Processes for Interactive Systems’, providing a
standardized description of UCD [15]. ISO 13407 provides guidance for achieving a
high level of usability through UCD actions and strategies. This standard describes an
iterative cycle of development composed of five main activities of UCD. Four of
these activities are performed iteratively until the outcome meets the initially set
objectives. Every UCD project should carry out these activities from the beginning.
These activities are listed below and presented in Figure 3.2:
1. Plan the human centered process.
2. Understand and specify the context of use.
3. Specify the user and organizational requirements.
4. Produce design solutions.
5. Evaluate designs against requirements.
Figure 3.2 The five main activities of UCD (adapted from ISO 13407 [15]).
ISO 13407 aims to provide general guidelines for UCD, the detailed description
about the research methods and techniques required to conduct these activities is not
included [16]. In fact, there are many research methods and techniques available for
UCD, with Table 3.1 presenting a selection of them, grouped by the four main
activities described above. The detailed discussion about each of these methods is not
within the scope of this thesis, instead, only the details of those been selected and
considered for this research will be included in below and following chapters.
Table 3.1 Research methods for UCD (adapted from [17, 18, 19, 21, 20]).
3.2. UCD Methodologies Applied in This Research
The main objective of this thesis is to design and evaluate a cartographic UI for
geolocation apps that supports the geospatial activities of a pedestrian user in
unfamiliar surroundings. In order to achieve high usability in such a system, UCD
methods should be carefully applied. As the first step, requirement analysis was
conducted to determine the user's needs, characteristics, context of use and
preferences. Methods like user profiling, interviewing existing users, and user
shadowing were used. Regarding traditional methods such as interviewing or
surveying can fail to gain deep understanding of the use context; a field-based user
shadowing was applied additionally to users during their actual trip in unfamiliar
environments.
The UCD-based plan of this research is presented in Figure 3.3. Following this
plan, the rest of this Chapter describes the Requirement Analysis stage, including user
profiling (Section 3.3), interview (Section 3.4), and field-based user shadowing
(Section 3.5).
Figure 3.3 The UCD-based plan of this research.
3.3. User Profiling
Understanding the target users of a system is critical in the UCD approach, and a
careful selection of a representative user group for the system to focus on is required.
Geolocation apps have a wide range of users in the general population. A survey was
conducted by GlobalWebIndex to determine the most used smartphone app in the
world. A list of smartphone apps were selected and presented to the survey
participants, and they were asked to answer the question “Which of the following
mobile applications have you used in the past month?” Not surprisingly, Google Maps,
a typical geolocation app, is the most popular mobile apps in the world, with over
54% smartphone owners using at least once during the month of August 2013 [25].
Since it would be infeasible to include the entire population of the potential users, the
target user population is limited to a smaller and manageable size which only focusing
on certain types of geolocation apps. This is used as an initial description of the users
to create the user profile.
To identify a meaningful geolocation apps area to concentrate on, I conducted a
review of related researches and commercial implementations. The result shows that
the majority of both the research projects and the commercial geolocation apps
targeted on tourism and travel type applications. As tourism information is commonly
geospatial, there is a large scope for exploring usable representations of it. A selection
of these commercial travel-based geolocation apps are presented in Table 3.2. With all
these factors, this thesis will focus on the area ‘travel and navigation’ of the
geolocation apps.
Table 3.2 Examples of existing geolocation apps.
User profiling defines the use contexts, characteristics and preferences of the
potential end users who are going to use the cartographic interface. In addition to the
general profile of the users of interest in this research given in Chapter 1, a more
detailed description of the characteristics of the intended users is shown in Table 3.3.
Table 3.3 Characteristics of the potential target users group.
3.4. Interview
To further understand the user requirements and define the design goals,
semi-structured interviews were conducted. The interviews aim to assess how a user
plan and conduct their trip in an unfamiliar environment. A typical scenario can be a
traveller arriving by train in an unfamiliar city - as he or she exits the underground
railway station, it may not be easy for such a traveller to immediately know where he
or she is and which way to go. The orientation question of “where am I?” must be
addressed first before resolving all other geospatial problems such as how to reach a
desired destination from the current location.
Based on the objective of this thesis and the related works described in previous
What kinds of geospatial information are required by the travelers when
they first arrive in an unfamiliar area?
In which way do users use the mobile map to navigate?
Do users find street photos and voice directions helpful?
What information on the mobile maps and the mental maps of users are
important for navigation and wayfinding?
Do users find it difficult to relate the mobile maps with the real world
surroundings?
How often and when do users feel themselves lost orientation and what is
the reason for that?
Do users find landmarks helpful?
Do users have problems with the zooming and panning techniques in
mobile maps?
The objective of the interview is to obtain a more clear understanding about the
user needs for pedestrian navigation and wayfinding. The findings from these
interviews were later used in the design of the prototype.
3.4.1 Participants
As presented in the previously created user profile (see Table 3.3), the interview
participants should represent a particular group of geolocation app users who visit an
unfamiliar city. 10 participants are recruited to participate in this study. 5 of the
participants are female and 5 are male. Few of them are foreigners. The average age is
32.4, with a minimum of 20 and maximum of 50. All participants owned touch-screen
smartphones and had used a geolocation app like Google Maps before. However, they
may have different levels of experience and knowledge with mobile devices, digital
maps, cartography, and navigation and wayfinding techniques. Table 3.4 and Table 3.5
present the profiles of these participants and their experiences with different fields
related to this study.
Table 3.4 Profiles of the interview participants.
Table 3.5 Interview participants’ experiences in fields related to this study.
3.4.2 Findings
I discovered common user behaviors from the interviews. In general, the
majority of participants plan their trips using a computer, tablet, or guidebook at home
before they travel to an unfamiliar city, and the rest of the participants only do this if
the preparation time allows. Most of them use digital maps on the screen of a
computer or tablet, and some use the printed paper map on the guidebook. They use
the map to find POIs and the routes from the public transportation stations to their
hotels. In order to learn about all the best POIs to visit, they search on the web, find
information on travel websites like TripAdvisor or Lonely Planet, or ask others who
have already been to the city for recommendations. To prepare for the actual
navigation, they ask friends who have visited the city about important landmarks that
can help them to stay oriented. They also look for the street photos of the POIs for the
reason that it could help them to recognize the places more easily.
Upon their arrival to the unfamiliar city, some participants use paper maps to do
the navigation, some use the navigation apps on their mobile phones. Four of the
participants (P1, P4, P5, P9) find using the paper maps difficult, they sometimes still
get lost in the unfamiliar environment. Most participants find the mobile navigation
system more helpful than paper maps. They only use the paper maps when they have
no access to a mobile navigation system.
In the case of using a mobile navigation system, the participants use the mobile
phones to search for the desired destination on the go. They often use mobile devices
as a tool to figure out the next destination. For example, at restaurant, they search for
good coffee shops to go after the meal. If they are at the hotel, they commonly look
for the navigation guidance on a computer or tablet before heading out. The
destination often described as landmarks, places, or POIs. Once decided on a
destination often described as landmarks, places, or POIs. Once decided on a