Usability Assessment of Augmented Reality-Based Pedestrian Navigation Aid

This study aimed to explore the usability problems of augmented reality (AR)-based pedestrian navigation aid. A field experiment was conducted to investigate the performance and experience of young and older adults when they used two common functions (virtual navigator and auxiliary map) of AR-based navigation aid. Success rate, navigation error and speed variation were measured. A total of 28 younger adults and older adults participated in this experiment. The results showed that almost all participants could complete navigation tasks successfully. Presenting virtual navigator and auxiliary map would result in more navigation errors for participants. In addition, the effect of virtual navigator on the navigation error was related to road condition. Presenting virtual navigator would decrease the navigation error in simple road condition and increase navigation error in complex road condition. Furthermore, older adults preferred AR-based navigation aid than young adults. Finally, 11 usability problems were collected in this study.