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The design of mobile navigation systems adapting to limited resources will be an important future challenge. Since typically several different means of transportation have to be combined in order to reach a destination, the user interface of such a system has to adapt to the user's changing situation. This applies especially to the alternating use of different technologies to detect the user's position, which should be as seamless as possible. This article presents a hybrid navigation system that relies on different technologies to determine the user's location and that adapts the presentation of route directions to the limited technical resources of the output device and the limited cognitive resources of the user.

Current GPS-based mobile navigation assistance systems support wayfinding, but they do not support learning about the spatial configuration of an environment. The present study examined effects of visual presentation modes for navigation assistance on wayfinding accuracy, route learning, and configural learning. Participants (high-school students) visited a university campus for the first time and took a predefined assisted tour. In Experiment 1 (n = 84, 42 females), a presentation mode showing wayfinding information from eye-level was contrasted with presentation modes showing wayfinding information included in views that provided comprehensive configural information. In Experiment 2 (n = 48, 24 females), wayfinding information was included in map fragments. A presentation mode which always showed north on top of the device was compared with a mode which rotated according to the orientation of the user. Wayfinding accuracy (deviations from the route), route learning, and configural learning (direction estimates, sketch maps) were assessed. Results indicated a trade-off between wayfinding and configural learning: Presentation modes providing comprehensive configural information supported the acquisition of configural knowledge at the cost of accurate wayfinding. The route presentation mode supported wayfinding at the cost of configural knowledge acquisition. Both presentation modes based on map fragments supported wayfinding. Individual differences in visual-spatial working memory capacity explained a considerable portion of the variance in wayfinding accuracy, route learning, and configural learning. It is concluded that learning about an unknown environment during assisted navigation is based on the integration of spatial information from multiple sources and can be supported by appropriate visualization.

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In this paper we regard the navigation aid provided by mobile navigation systems in a real environment and the effects of these mobile assistants to the development of spatial knowledge. Therefore, we report on a user study concerning the acquisition of spatial knowledge. This study sets up on a former study described by Krüger and colleagues and sheds light on problems concerning the acquisition of survey knowledge while being navigated by a mobile handheld PC.