Icon based Indoor Navigation : Is icon based navigation a good method for indoor wayfinding?

Sammanfattning: Humans today rely heavily on navigational aids on their smartphones to find their way. These aids have shown to be decreasing our ability to learn routes since the interaction with the environment is minimal. Technology assisting indoor navigation is getting more common, and the same approach, which has shown to impair spatial ability, is used, and will most likely result in the same problems. In the current study an application was developed that uses landmarks represented as icons to guide the users. The application was tested in a wayfinding task and compared to a control group using text instructions. Time for completing the route, wayfinding errors and route knowledge were measured and compared between groups. The results show that the text group had a faster walking time, but no significant difference was found in the other measurement. The route knowledge test turned out to be too difficult for the participants. The conclusion of the study is that icon based indoor navigation works but more research needs to be done to test if it facilitates spatial learning