Effects of Virtual Map Visual Presentations and Gender Differences on Wayfinding Using Touchscreen Electronic Guides

The interactive touchscreen electronic guide plays a significant role in the commercial services of large shopping malls, providing an excellent interactive experience for users. This study aims to investigate the factors of virtual map visual presentation and gender differences on users' wayfinding performance with interactive touchscreen electronic guide devices. The research variables were the types of virtual map visual presentations (i.e., top view maps and perspective view maps) and gender (i.e., males and females). A total of 40 participants were invited to take part in the experiment via convenience sampling methods. This experiment is a 2 x 2 between-subjects design. Participants needed to complete three wayfinding tasks and fill out questionnaires regarding the effortlessness and preference. In addition, the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) questionnaire was also adopted. The generated results are as follows: (1) Gender differences exist in the task performance of the interactive touchscreen electronic guides. (2) Different virtual map visual presentation types affect participants' subjective evaluations. (3) There is a significant interaction effect between the virtual map visual presentation and gender on wayfinding task performance, i.e., male participants performed better than female participants in the perspective view maps. In contrast, female participants performed better than male participants in the top view maps. (4) The degree of effortlessness of the perspective view maps was significantly higher than that of the top view maps.