A brief survey on understanding the interaction between human and technology at the task of pedestrian navigation

Abstract

In this paper we present a brief summary of an online survey we conducted in 2014. 135 participants successfully completed this survey, whereby 46% of the subjects were females and 54% males. We found out, that nowadays many users fall back on using smartphones in order to orientate themselves in unknown environments. In terms of analog navigation methods, people still rely on street name signs and landmarks such as characteristic buildings. However, relying on current smartphone habits for navigation tasks, visual attention is usually heavily drawn, which can cause a reduced perception and potentially makes smartphone map navigation more dangerous.