Global Positioning System (GPS) is currently the most frequently used wayfinding aid for driving. Yet, GPS is designed to act as a driving guide rather than to help users gain spatial knowledge. Accordingly, GPS might be less usable in situations where such knowledge is required or highly desirable. In this study, we experimentally study the influence of GPS display scales (single-scale vs. dual-scale) using simulated driving tasks in a virtual environment. The single-scale GPS is similar to the regular GPS view. The dual-scale GPS aid is a dual-scale navigation tool that provides two levels of detail, including both detailed and contextual information. The results demonstrate that the dual-scale GPS was more efficient in leading the participants to the destination during the simulated driving and was more useful for the participants to establish spatial awareness and a cognitive map; the dual-scale GPS participants also reported higher subjective evaluations. The proposed dual-scale GPS design and experimental results show some indications for designing new wayfinding aids aimed at increasing wayfinding performance while simultaneously helping users construct a cognitive map.

Global Positioning System (GPS) is currently the most often used wayfinding aid for driving. Yet GPS is originally designed to provide a driving guide rather than to help users gain spatial knowledge. Accordingly, GPS might be less usable in situations where spatial knowledge is required. This study experimentally compared two wayfinding aids using simulated driving tasks in a virtual environment: a simulated GPS and a dual-scale exploration aid (DSEA). The DSEA, which provides two levels of details—both detailed and contextual information—was proposed to support participants in finding and selecting routes by themselves. The results show that although DSEA was less helpful in leading participants to their destination and corresponded to more turning errors in simulated driving, it was more useful for the corresponding participants to establish spatial awareness and a cognitive map. The influence of participants' spatial ability test score on wayfinding performance was measured and discussed. The proposed DSEA design and experimental results show some indications for designing new wayfinding aids aimed at reducing wayfinding errors and constructing cognitive maps while still providing easy navigation.

Comprehensive yet personalized information for a location is usually desired by mobile users in situ. Traditional navigation systems provide complete static information, such as address, contact, even photos and reviews for a certain place. However, such information does not reflect the real time situation (e.g. popularity/crowdness). Location-based social networks provide opportunity to build social dynamics between the place and potential visitors. In this work, we propose a design by leveraging public online information with users' social network resources to provide real time exploration in novel environments. A mobile application is implemented using Wikipedia, Panoramio, and Foursquare data to provide complete, updated, and trustworthy information. Design highlights and implementation are reported.

Establishing and maintaining communication between decision makers, professional responders and general public is vital in many emergency planning and rescue situations. In this paper we present our research on using first-hand information collected by mobile users to increase the flexibility and richness in collaborative emergency management. We propose our design to support direct positioning, quick assessment, and rich communication by leveraging mobile uploaded geo-tagged photos as shared media.

In this work we analyze the behavior on a company-internal social network site to determine which interaction patterns signal closeness between colleagues. Regression analysis suggests that employee behavior on social network sites (SNSs) reveals information about both professional and personal closeness. While some factors are predictive of general closeness (e.g. content recommendations), other factors signal that employees feel personal closeness towards their colleagues, but not professional closeness (e.g. mutual profile commenting). This analysis contributes to our understanding of how SNS behavior reflects relationship multiplexity: the multiple facets of our relationships with SNS connections.

Increasing mobility for modern life requires people to access information and make decisions "on the go". Mobil applications place special constraints that challenge the existing ways of visual analytic design where relatively stable and interaction-rich contexts are assumed. In tasks like learning unfamiliar places, current visualizations on mobile devices are not capable of helping users to form a good cognitive map of the environment. How can we take advantage of rich physical environmental cues and supplement with computational power to help people make sense of the environment? In this paper, we present a framework of sensemaking to model how people get insight into the environment as they navigate around. Based on this framework, we present design guidelines for mobile visual analytics that could enhance the spatial awareness of the navigator and analyze several existing designs through the discussion.

Emergency management and planning often involves multiple domain experts with diverse knowledge backgrounds and responsibilities. Current practices in emergency management and planning have not leveraged the state-of-art technologies in information sharing, synthesis, and analysis. The proposed research will investigate the process of collaborative sensemaking in emergency planning and implement a map-based online system to support this process.

Teams of specialized experts, such as emergency management planning teams, while making decisions need to efficiently pool domain-specific knowledge, synthesize relevant information, and keep track of collaborators activities at a low interaction cost. This requires tools that allow monitoring both low-level information (e.g., individual actions and external events) and higher-order activities (e.g., how members contribute to groupwork). This paper presents design of CIVIL, a system prototype developed to support map-based decision-making. We report our empirical evaluation of the effects of visualizations on the decision process and the final product.

It is difficult for a navigator to find directions to a given target in an unfamiliar environment, especially a virtual environment. The commonly used overview maps can show survey knowledge only on one particular scale but cannot provide spatial knowledge at other scales. In this study, three wayfinding aids (a view-in-view map, animation guide, and human system collaboration) were compared experimentally in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and users' satisfaction. Results show that although these three aids all can effectively help participants find targets quicker and easier, their usefulness is different, with the view-in-view map being the best and human system collaboration the worst. Their usefulness also appears to be different for people with different spatial abilities. The results indicate that the design of wayfinding tools in virtual environments should consider the type and the presentation style of spatial information based on wayfinding tasks and users' spatial ability.

The proliferation of GPS units in our life has greatly changed how people find their ways in the real world. However, overreliance on step-by-step route directions from these automated navigation systems may result in less consciously building spatial knowledge of the environment, which is critical to wayfinding. Also, GPS devices may divert people's attention from objects in the physical world to virtual representations on screen, and make people less engaged with the real environment. Consequently, when GPS device are out of access, malfunction, or simply give wrong directions, people may not be well prepared to react to unexpected environmental conditions and find alternative action plans. Such mental unreadiness may cause safety problems in emergency situations. In this paper, we discuss the importance of building spatial awareness in wayfinding activities, analyze GPS features and constraints, and propose the context-awareness design principles that may supplement the efficiency of GPS as well as keep people actively engaged in exploration.