Evaluation of wayfinding performance and workload on electronic map interface

Abstract

Electronic map (E-map) is important to support wayfinding, especially for finding unfamiliar routes in the current Web mapping service applications. This study examined the effects of four designing factors including Map Size, Map Type, Direction key, and Zoom function as well as the ability of sense of direction (SOD) and gender differences on the wayfinding performance for a simulated E-map interface. The results indicate that participants with a better SOD would have the faster response time in average and would lower overall workload for target task. Furthermore, participants would have higher workload as the response time is increasing. The interaction effect of SOD and map type would affect the mean response time for target and direction tasks. Participants with good SOD using mixed map have the faster mean response time than ones of poor SOD. For direction task, males with good SOD and good SOD using E-map would have faster mean response time. In addition, both males using mixed map and females using E-map would have faster mean response time. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.