Exploring the design of stereoscopic 3D for multilevel maps

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the use of stereoscopic 3D displays for presenting multilevel map based information to improve indoor navigation task performance in 3D spaces, such as multi-floor buildings. Current visualizations of multilevel 3D spaces map the floor levels to flat 2D presentations, which do not directly represent the 3D space. We present a laboratory based user study (n=17), where the participants completed two types of tasks with a S3D device - searching a route through a S3D maze, and assessing different visualization techniques for S3D indoor map user interfaces (UIs). The findings suggest that wayfinding tasks can be completed more quickly with the S3D approach than with a 2D representation where floor levels are shown side-by-side.