Dynamic Maps for Future Navigation Systems: Agile Design Exploration of User Interface Concepts

• Authors: Volker Paelke;Karsten Nebe
• Venue: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Part III: Ubiquitous and Intelligent Interaction
• Year: 2009

Maps have traditionally been used to support orientation and navigation. Navigation systems shift the focus from printed maps to interactive systems. The key goal of navigation systems is to simplify specific tasks, e.g. route planning or route following. While users of navigation systems need less skills in navigation specific activities, e.g. reading maps or manual route planning, they must now interact with the user interface of the navigation device, which requires a different set of skills. Current navigation systems aim to simplify the interaction by providing interfaces that use basic interaction mechanisms (e.g. button based interfaces on a touch-screen), exploiting the fact that many users are already familiar with such techniques. In the presentation of the information most navigation systems employ map-like displays, possibly combined with additional information, again to exploit familiarity. While such an approach can help with early adoption, it can also limit usefulness and usability. There is, however, a large opportunity to improve input, output and functionality of navigation systems. In this paper we expand a model of classical map based communication to identify possibilities where "dynamic maps" can enhance map based communication in navigation systems. We report on how an agile design exploration process was applied to examine the design space spanned by the new model and to develop system probes. We discuss the user feedback and its implications for future interface concepts for navigation systems.