A comparison of spatial knowledge acquisition with maps and mobile maps

We investigated the effects of different modes of information provision on spatial knowledge acquisition in a large-scale environmental setting by comparing two groups of participants; those who had learned the environment from a map and those who had learned it using a mobile map. The experiment was conducted in an external urban environment and consisted of two phases; an initial learning phase, and a testing phase where participants were asked to provide orientation, Euclidean and route distance estimates. The results show that there are differences in the spatial knowledge acquired, and that mobile map users performed worse than map users on route distance estimation. Also, only mobile map users showed differences in configurational knowledge between different types of locations. We propose that mobile map users acquire a more fragmented and regionalised knowledge representation based on strong connections between locally clustered landmarks along the route. This can be attributed both to the piecemeal presentation of views during navigation and to increased requirements on users’ attention. We conclude by discussing the implications for learning with mobile navigation applications in urban environments.