Phases of urban tourists' exploratory navigation: A field study

Abstract

There is a lack of widely available mobile map applications that effectively support pedestrian tourists who prefer the freedom of exploring their surroundings, and might not have an explicit destination they are trying to reach in mind. Although research systems to support such exploratory navigation have been developed, these are often only studied in controlled trials. It is therefore unclear if researchers are covering all types of navigation tourists do. To get a comprehensive picture of tourists' navigation, we carried out a field study with 16 tourists, shadowing them during part of their visit to Helsinki. Our findings support designers of mobile applications by describing the phases and dynamics of exploration and wayfinding, as well as how existing popular navigation tools are used during exploration. The phases contribute towards a framework for assessing existing tools and developing new ones to cover all navigation activities tourists undertake. We present 5 design implications to support creating tools that take into account the real-world insights collected in the study.