Abstract: In this paper a holistic approach for developing indoor pedestrian navigation systems is described: first of all, a map modeling toolkit is introduced that allows for the simple and fast creation of environment models and calculation of preference-based routes in various indoor areas. Furthermore, it is shown that landmarks can be easily derived from this model. The landmark selection is based on three user studies that show that “functional” landmarks like doors and stairs are suitable for navigation. The main study was conducted with 64 participants to evaluate different depictions of the user’s surroundings including landmarks. For this purpose an abstract graph-like navigation prototype that uses the data of the modeling toolkit was compared to a depiction additionally showing a mobile map. Results indicate that especially users with a good sense of direction perform significantly better with the graph-like interface in terms of task completion time.
Keywords: Pedestrian navigation system, landmarks, routing, preferences, user evaluation
