3 User-Centered design of landmark visualizations

Abstract

Landmark-based navigation is the most natural concept for humans to navigate themselves through their environment. It is therefore desirable to incorporate this concept into car and personal navigation systems. However, today’s navigation systems are limited to driving assistance and provide guidance information in terms of instructions and distances, based on the current position and the underlying digital map. Research in the field of spatial cognition has shown that the use of landmarks is very important for humans navigating through unfamiliar environments. The integration of landmarks could therefore make navigation instructions more usable. In this chapter we present a design concept for the visualization of building landmarks in mobile maps. We consider four categories of building landmarks: well-known shops (trade chains), shops referenced by their type, buildings with a specific name or function and buildings described by characteristic visual aspects. We then examine how landmarks from each of these categories can be effectively visualized by comparing possible visualizations at different abstraction levels, ranging from photo realistic image presentations, over drawings, sketches and icons to abstract symbols and words. As a guideline to designers we provide a matrix representation of the design space from which possible and recommended presentation styles for each category can be identified.