The Efficiency and User Experience of AR Walking Navigation Tools for Older Adults
Authors: Liu Mingjun , Tang Liu , Zhou Jia 
Published: October 2023

Navigating in unfamiliar environments is a common problem for people, and the use of navigation tools on smartphones can improve navigation efficiency and help people navigate better. Many navigation systems today incorporate augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) technologies to assist navigation. However, older adults still face difficulties in using these emerging technologies. In particular, in complex environments, they are prone to taking wrong actions that result in deviation from the intended path. Previous studies have found that older adults have trouble matching virtual indicators with real environments when using AR-based walking navigation tools, especially when faced with multiple similar intersections. Different types of AR-based walking navigation systems use different virtual prompts, and their effectiveness may vary depending on the environment. To further explore the impact of different AR-based walking navigation systems and environmental complexity on older adults' navigation, this study recruited 36 older adults to participate in an experiment. They used three different AR-based walking navigation systems (landmark-based, route-based, and map-based) in two different levels of environmental complexity (simple and complex) to navigate to a designated destination in a virtual environment. First, the study found that participants made fewer navigation errors in the simple environment than in the complex environment. However, the cognitive load was higher in the simple environment. Further analysis showed that environmental complexity mainly affects cognitive load by influencing the degree of frustration and effort that people put into the task. The simpler the environment, the more effort participants felt they needed to exert to complete the task, and the more frustrated they became after making mistakes. And it was found that the number of intersections was higher in the simple environment, which may be a contributing factor to the higher cognitive load. Secondly, the study found that navigation performance (task completion time and the number of errors) and subjective feedback (system usability and cognitive load) were best for the route-based AR walking navigation system among the three systems, followed by the landmark-based AR walking navigation system, and the map-based AR walking navigation system was the least effective. This is because older adults' spatial abilities mainly focus on landmark knowledge and route knowledge, not configurational knowledge. Post-experiment interviews revealed that the route-based AR walking navigation system was found to be more similar to real-life navigation landmarks, making it easier to use. However, the landmark-based AR walking navigation system requires participants to pay attention to the corresponding landmarks, and their relationships with arrow indicators and accompanying text to confirm whether they have made the correct decision. This may lead to navigation errors when participants rely on a single source of information. Finally, the study found that participants with higher spatial memory completed the task in less time and made fewer navigation errors. The results of this study indicate that the greater the difference between AR navigation assistance information and real spatial information, the worse the navigation performance and experience of older users in different environments with different levels of complexity. This study provides a reference for improving the age-adaptability of navigation assistance tools and optimizing information prompting methods in complex environments.