Presentation Strategies for Micro-Navigation in the Physical World

Abstract

This work provides first insights into supporting hierarchical micro-navigation in the physical world in a manner relevant to AR systems. In this paper, we study the performance of two presentation strategies in tasks that involve navigating to an object inside a hierarchy of physical containers within the user's reach. We consider two types of navigation aids: Those that provide route knowledge via step-by-step instructions, using simple graphical overlays, and those that provide survey knowledge via map-like overviews, using 3D depth visualizations. We performed a user study using a cardboard mock-up of a spatial display. Our experiment shows that in shallow hierarchies route aids and survey aids perform comparably in terms of navigation time and accuracy. When a target is embedded deeper into a structure, the performance of survey aids is affected negatively, while route aids maintain a consistent performance. Users re- ported that survey aids helped them understand a container hierarchy, but route aids required less processing time and effort, and thus, were more preferred. We found no significant effect of aid type on users' preference. Accordingly, we recommend considering the depth of task when employing these presentation strategies.