Navigation in Indoor Environments: Does the Type of Visual Learning Stimulus Matter?

This work addresses the impact of a geovisualization's level of realism on a user's experience in indoor navigation. The key part of the work is a user study in which participants navigated along a designated evacuation route previously learnt in a virtual tour or traditional 2D floor plan. The efficiency and effectiveness of completing the task was measured by the number of incorrect turns during navigation and completion time. The complexity of mental spatial representations that participants developed before and after navigating the route was also evaluated. The data was obtained using several qualitative and quantitative research methods (mobile eye tracking, structured interviews, sketching of cognitive maps, creation of navigation instructions, and additional questions to evaluate spatial orientation abilities). A total of 36 subjects (17 in the floor plan group and 19 in the virtual tour group) participated in the study. The results showed that the participants from both groups were able to finish the designated navigation route, but more detailed mental spatial representations were developed by the virtual tour group than the floor plan group. The participants in the virtual tour group created richer navigation instructions both before and after evacuation, mentioned more landmarks and could recall their characteristics. Visual landmark characteristics available in the virtual tour also seemed to support the correct decision-making.