Pros and Cons of Utilizing Mobile Navigation Systems in Pedestrian Way Finding

Due to the rapid advance of mobile devices and on-line global map services, way-finding in outdoor environments is becoming much easier and comfortable. However, some people are still complaining to navigation systems for their poor guidance. In the infancy of such systems, many navigation systems had weak points with some reasons such as (i) lack of map data enough to guide routes precisely, (ii) no other way than the shortest path route search method, and (iii) no consecutive map update. However, present mobile navigation systems have conquered those problems; we can now access to on-line map, which are continuously updating, over high-speed mobile networks and can be supported by much smarter route search functions. However, there is still an unclear point about why we get lost with the powerful navigation systems: someone is still confused and struggling in their route searches. In our research, instead of exploring further navigational functions, we will focus on the human ability about map reading and understanding. Actually, in our experiment based on iPhone with navigation software, we could clarify the problems and the reasons from the different map-reading abilities by people.