Impact of spatial auditory navigation on user experience during augmented outdoor navigation tasks

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spatial auditory cues influence user experience in augmented outdoor navigation, highlighting the underuse of auditory modalities and suggesting future enhancements for audio-augmented reality applications.

Contribution

It provides a literature review and user study demonstrating the impact of spatial auditory navigation on user experience in augmented reality outdoor tasks.

Findings

Auditory cues improve navigation experience.

Auditory modality is underrepresented in current AR apps.

Future audio-augmented reality can enhance interaction quality.

Abstract

The auditory sense of humans is important when it comes to navigation. The importance is especially high in cases when an object of interest is visually partly or fully covered. Interactions with users of technology are mainly focused on the visual domain of navigation tasks. This paper presents the results of a literature review and user study exploring the impact of spatial auditory navigation on user experience during an augmented outdoor navigation task. For the user test, participants used an augmented reality app guiding them to different locations with different digital augmentation. We conclude that the utilization of the auditory sense is yet still underrepresented in augmented reality applications. In the future, more usage scenarios for audio-augmented reality such as navigation will enhance user experience and interaction quality.