Exploring the Design of History-Enriched Floor Interfaces for Asynchronous Navigation Support

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Environmental cues influence our spatial behaviour when we explore unfamiliar spaces. Research particularly shows that the presence/actions of other people affects our navigation decisions. Here we examine how such social information can be integrated digitally into the environment to support navigation in indoor public spaces. We carried out a study (n=12) to explore how to represent traces of navigation behaviour. We compared 6 floor visualisations and examined how they affect participants' navigational choices. Results suggest that direct representations such as footprints are most informative. To investigate further how such visualisation could work in practice, we implemented an interactive floor system and used it as probe during one-to-one design sessions (n=26). We particularly focused on four design challenges: the overall visual representation, representation of multiple people, designing more prominent visualisations and the incorporation of non-identifying information. Our results provide insights for designers looking to develop history-enriched floor interfaces.