Supporting Navigation of Outdoor Shopping Complexes for Visually-impaired Users through Multi-modal Data Fusion

TL;DR

This paper introduces iExplore, a mobile app designed to assist visually impaired users in navigating outdoor shopping complexes by integrating multi-modal data, addressing a gap in existing GPS-based solutions.

Contribution

It presents a new methodology for developing assistive navigation technology tailored to outdoor shopping environments for the visually impaired.

Findings

User feedback indicates potential of iExplore to improve navigation assistance.

Experimental validation shows promising results in real shopping center settings.

Design principles derived from user challenges guide system development.

Abstract

Outdoor shopping complexes (OSC) are extremely difficult for people with visual impairment to navigate. Existing GPS devices are mostly designed for roadside navigation and seldom transition well into an OSC-like setting. We report our study on the challenges faced by a blind person in navigating OSC through developing a new mobile application named iExplore. We first report an exploratory study aiming at deriving specific design principles for building this system by learning the unique challenges of the problem. Then we present a methodology that can be used to derive the necessary information for the development of iExplore, followed by experimental validation of the technology by a group of visually impaired users in a local outdoor shopping center. User feedback and other experiments suggest that iExplore, while at its very initial phase, has the potential of filling a practical gap in existing assistive technologies for the visually impaired.