Pedestrian navigation and wayfinding for mobile devices is an area of continuous research with increased interest not only from the academic community but also from the rest of the world. In this blog, different approaches have been proposed in the past (i.e. Virtual Navigator, MD3DM VR Interface) but were mainly concerned with virtual reality technology. In parallel to these approaches, a mobile map interface has been developed. The interface is based on 2D visualisation technologies and can display different versions of 2D maps (raster, vector and aerial) and textual information. In addition, it can serve as a basic location-based system (LBS) by providing simple search capabilities (i.e. where is the nearest post office). The main functionality of the interface includes the following three categories: map visualisation, map navigation and finding local information as illustrated below.
The ‘map visualisation’ component provides a simple but effective way of visualising digital maps in mobile devices. To provide a multi-level visualisation framework similar to the ones existing in GIS software, four different types of maps can be displayed. Next, the ‘map navigation’ component allows users to interact with the 2D digital maps by either zooming, rotating or moving in eight directions inside the map using the controls embedded in the interface. Hotspots can be used to enlarge the map to cover the whole mobile display screen. Hotspots can be also used as hyperlinks, linking the map with web-pages that either contains relevant information about the location (i.e. City’s University website) or other types of digital maps such as Google maps. The ‘find local information’ component allows participants to search for geographical information such as street names and services (i.e. list of restaurants, bars, etc) and display information about them on the map.