Improving the Usability of Pedestrian Navigation Systems
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IMPROVING THE USABILITY OF PEDESTRIAN NAVIGATION SYSTEMS Ioannis Delikostidis Examining committee: Prof.dr. M. Molenaar University of Twente Prof.dr. Y. Georgiadou University of Twente Prof.dr. G. Gartner University of Vienna Prof.dr.ir. P.J.M. van Oosterom Delft University of Technology Prof.dr. M. de Jong University of Twente ITC dissertation number 181 ITC, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, the Netherlands ISBN 978-90-6164-303-6 Cover designed by Ioannis Delikostidis Printed by ITC Printing Department Copyright © 2011 by Ioannis Delikostidis IMPROVING THE USABILITY OF PEDESTRIAN NAVIGATION SYSTEMS DISSERTATION to obtain the degree of doctor at the University of Twente, on the authority of the Rector Magnificus, prof. dr. H. Brinksma, on account of the decision of the graduation committee, to be publicly defended on March 16th, 2011 at 12:45 hrs by Ioannis Delikostidis Born in Athens, Greece On October 19th, 1974 This thesis is approved by Prof. Dr. M.J. Kraak, promotor Dr. C.P.J.M van Elzakker, assistant promotor Acknowledgements Completing my PhD research in 3.5 years has been a challenge but also a beautiful journey full of unique experiences. Carrying it out would not have been possible without the help and support of many wonderful people from around the world to whom I would like to express my gratitude. Foremost, I would like to deeply thank my beloved parents Eleni and Giorgos, my sister Sofia and my aunt Sonia for their endless support, love, care and understanding throughout my studies, as well as my uncle Vasilios Kalpakidis for being a true motivator for my postgraduate education. My deepest gratitude goes to Diana Kusumastuti, who, as a true soul-mate, was always there to share my worries and my happiness, to advise and encourage me, and fill me up with love, appreciation and inspiration which made many impossible things possible. I consider myself very fortunate having been supervised by Dr. Corné van Elzakker, who provided me with continuous, methodical assistance on every scientific, material and personal matter, being not only an excellent supervisor, but also a concerned friend. His invaluable detailed feedback on my work, carefully advising me but at the same time encouraging the development of my own ideas, made it possible for me to formulate, develop and complete this research. I am very grateful to my Promotor and supervisor Prof. Dr. Menno-Jan Kraak, who first of all gave me the opportunity to do this PhD in ITC, and then has been closely observing my progress, continuously providing me with very efficient scientific guidance. His constructive comments and very smart suggestions have always been a spark for considering new ways to improve my work and further rationalize my choices. I am truly grateful to Bas Retsios, who, besides being a great friend, generously shared with me his remarkable software programming knowledge, experience and skills, extensively working with me on the prototype development, which led to very satisfying results. Many thanks go to Juri Engel and Glander Tassilo from the University of Potsdam, who generated the landmark visibility layers for the area of Amsterdam, a fundamental part of my prototype implementation. This would not have been possible without the kind help of the Municipality of Amsterdam as well, to which I am grateful for providing me with high-resolution 2.5D shape-files of the city. I would like to thank Dr. Muki Haklay from University i College London, who provided me with a very expensive mobile eye-tracking system, evaluated as a possible part of the field-based usability testing methodology of this research. I am also thankful to the UWSM2 project members for our very productive cooperation and the large exchange of knowledge and new ideas. Many thanks to the Research Group Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology for offering me the possibility to travel and present my work there, receiving very valuable feedback, generous assistance and friendliness. I am deeply grateful to Mireia Romaguera, Mustafa Gokmen and Ozgun Oskay Alan for their admirable friendship, the unforgettable moments with our music band “Ken Lee” and their substantial support and help on any possible matter; to Zornitza Yovcheva for generously helping me with the usability testing part of my research and for being a wonderful colleague and a friend. I would also like to express my gratitude to each and every colleague of mine from the ITC GIP Department, especially to Dr. Connie Blok, Dr. Rob Lemmens, Dr. Ulanbek Turdukulov, Barend Köbben and Wim Feringa for their suggestions and assistance, and Irma Kveladze, Qiuju Zhang, Xiang Zhang and Dongpo Deng for their prominent contribution to my research and their delightful friendship and appreciation. Big thanks go to all the people who participated as test persons in the two field- based experiments of my research, spending their valuable time and effort to help me complete it; but also to the ones who expressed their pure enthusiasm to participate. I also would like to thank Juan Amiguet, who kindly offered his software programming assistance in the earlier stages of the prototype implementation. Hearty thanks to Ivo Bijker and Martin Blankestijn for their very enjoyable company and their friendly support but also to Loes Colenbrander, Ellen Rijckenberg, Marion Steenbergen and André Hintzbergen for taking good care of the logistics and the administrative issues. Last but not least, I would like to thank the State Scholarships Foundation and the Ministry of Public Order of Greece for covering the entire cost of my studies abroad and helping me with many financial and managerial issues. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... i Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ iii List of figures .................................................................................................................. vii List of tables .................................................................................................................. xiii 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background and context of research ................................................................. 1 1.2 Research objectives ........................................................................................... 6 1.3 Dissertation outline ............................................................................................ 8 2. Geo-mobile applications and pedestrian users ................................................ 11 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 11 2.2 Geo-mobile applications: developments and issues ........................................ 11 2.2.1 Representation of reality on mobile displays ........................................... 12 2.2.2 Context awareness and map adaptation .................................................. 14 2.2.3 Addressing the problems of mobile map presentation ............................ 17 2.2.3.1 Overview-plus-detail ................................................................................ 17 2.2.3.2 Focus-plus-context and fish-eye view ...................................................... 19 2.2.3.3 Off-screen object visualization ................................................................. 19 2.2.3.4 Smooth (animated) zooming and panning ............................................... 24 2.2.3.5 Vario-scale maps ...................................................................................... 26 2.2.4 Map orientation and navigation differences between individuals ........... 27 2.2.5 2D, 3D and bird's-eye view map perspectives .......................................... 29 2.3 Spatial perception and cognition ..................................................................... 31 2.3.1 Visualizing mental maps ........................................................................... 33 2.4 Reality and the context of pedestrian mobile map users ................................ 34 2.5 Connecting reality, mobile maps and cognitive maps ..................................... 35 2.5.1 Mental maps and mapping applications .................................................. 35 2.5.2 Mental maps and the role of landmarks .................................................. 36 2.6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 37 iii 3. Issues addressed by geo- mobile applications ................................................. 39 3.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 39 3.2 Existing mobile pedestrian navigation applications ......................................... 39 3.3 Mobile pedestrian navigation research prototype applications ...................... 44 3.3.1 Case 1: m-Loma ........................................................................................ 44 3.3.2 Case 2: REAL project ................................................................................. 47 3.3.3 Case 3: EGSSystem .................................................................................... 48 3.3.4 Case 4: Navitime ......................................................................................