The Role of Augmented Reality on Spatio-Temporal Decision Making in the context of Indoor Navigation

This study is an empirical study that explores the effect of an Augmented Reality (AR)-enabled navigation aid on indoor navigation performance and user experience. A new AR-enabled navigation aid prototype was developed for this study. Its user ratings and navigation performance records were compared to those of a printed map. A total of 50 college students participated in the study, and each participant experienced two conditions with different navigation routes presented in a randomized order. During each condition, participant performed a navigation task with a destination and a route recall task to retrace the navigation path without any navigation aid. The results showed that in terms of navigation task, participants required shorter navigation time and made fewer errors with an AR-enabled navigation aid than with a printed map. The results of route recall task demonstrated a significant effect of participants’ culture. In the printed map condition, East Asians required shorter route recall time and made fewer errors than European Americans. In the AR-enabled navigation aid condition, European Americans required shorter route recall time and made fewer errors than East Asians. Findings from the current study highlight new factors such as individual differences shaped by culture in affecting a person’s navigation behavior. Such findings will be beneficial to researchers and app developers interested in successfully merging AR technologies with current indoor navigation aids