Comparing viewing and filtering techniques for mobile urban exploration

Abstract

The exploration of the immediate surroundings through mobile location- aware devices is starting to become an everyday urban activity. Due to the increasing amount of available geo-referenced information, advanced viewing and filtering techniques need to be investigated as a complemen- tation to simple present-day 2D-map presentations. This article examines both well-established techniques (2D map, list view, category view) and advanced concepts (3D map, tag cloud) regarding their support of mobile urban exploration. In a field study, 26 participants used an experimental multi-view prototype for viewing and filtering tasks on a route through an urban environment. The results show that content-based views may provide similarly good support for viewing the content as spatial interfaces. Furthermore, the experiment provides evidence that the advantages of content-based filtering techniques are increasingly preferred to spatial ones in regard to the amount of available information.

Thomas Grechenig

Ao.Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn.

• Mail: thomas.grechenig@tuwien.ac.at
• Phone: +43 1 58801 183400