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Navigation durch Orientierung (WayTO): Unterstützung für räumliche Orientierung und Navigation in Realräumen durch kognitiv angemessene räumliche Information auf mobilen Navigationsgeräten

Fachliche Zuordnung Geodäsie, Photogrammetrie, Fernerkundung, Geoinformatik, Kartographie
Förderung Förderung von 2014 bis 2019
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 252374284
 
Erstellungsjahr 2018

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The Wayfinding Through Orientation (WayTO) project investigated a new paradigm of assisted wayfinding that supports spatial orientation in a large-scale environment while moving through it following route instructions. The project was motivated by the prevalent use of computer-based navigation assistance that foreground route instructions at the expense of orientation information, impeding spatial learning. Two researchers with their groups (Geoinformatik, Münster: conceptual work for deriving principles for visualizations, empirical studies, algorithms, and prototyping; Bildungspsychologie, Mannheim: empirical investigations in spatial learning and wayfinding depending on visualization features) worked together in inter-disciplinary collaboration. A main assumption of the Wayfinding Through Orientation (WayTO) project was that human direction givers (in contrast to computer-based navigation assistance) tend to include orientation (survey) information in their wayfinding instructions. This assumption was confirmed. Particularly for complex routes conveyed through a visual sketch, human instructors spontaneously embedded route instructions in larger environmental structures, utilizing environmental features such as higherlevel elements (regions, districts, the “city center”, vague places) as part of the route description. These elements were not chosen randomly. The project developed an innovative approach to assess sketches that contain both route information and survey information with respect to two dimensions, rather than classifying a sketch into only one of several categories. This approach appeared to be valid and sketches can be reliably assessed with the rating scheme. Based on these insights, the project pursued two main goals: The first goal was to develop design principles and concepts for visualizations (visualization features) for conveying orientation information in assisted navigation. The second goal was to test empirically whether those visualization features can actually contribute to better spatial learning about the environment during assisted navigation. For the first goal, visualization features were developed that can be utilized to convey orientation information in addition to precise turn-by-turn route instructions. Those visualization features concern the possibility to show relational information between the current position and heading and important but unseen target locations even if these locations are “off-screen” (i.e., outside the visible zoom range), the schematization of a map-based visualization of the environment and the comprehensiveness and stability of the shown configuration by variations of zoom level and rotation (user-aligned vs. north-up). Moreover, orientation instructions were developed. Those instructions do not only add orientation information but re-structure and partially replace the conventional turnby-turn instructions, for instance, by reference to structural and regional features and referring to different levels of the cognitive hierarchy (e.g. “heading is now in the direction of the city center, “drive through the park”). An empirical study on learning the presented instructions demonstrated that those “global” features included in the orientation instructions can well be remembered, and more landmarks were learned compared to conventional turn-by-turn instructions or simply “chunked” route instructions that do not refer to global features. For the second goal, it was experimentally investigated whether particular visual features can improve the acquisition of survey knowledge for orientation while securing successful routefollowing. In previous studies, a trade-off was found, i.e., apparently, learning and route-following stand in conflict. A visualization that showed main target locations at the edge of a small, rotating (“user-aligned”) screen during navigation – thereby providing continuously updated directional information to the targets from the current position and heading in the environment – supported both route-following and learning of those directions, although the information was not comprehensive, not correct with respect to distance and it was “egocentric” (view-dependent, self-to-object) rather than “allocentric” (object-to-object). Thus, the acquisition of a “cognitive map” was not supported. However, these directional relations between self-locations and target locations are an important and useful way to store spatial information and can be identified with “orientation”. Therefore, it has been demonstrated that, in contrast to previous studies, both goals of wayfinding (route-following and spatial orientation) can be pursued and supported through visual features in assisted navigation at the same time. The applicants have been contacted several times for interviews in television, radio and newspapers with regard to navigation-related topics, including (impeded) spatial learning with assisted navigation and sense of direction, as well as particularly for the WayTO concept, demonstrating the relevance of the work.

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