Exocentric Pedestrian Navigation for AR Head-Mounted Displays

Augmented reality (AR) is gradually becoming used for navigation in urban environments, allowing users to see instructions in their physical environment. However, viewing this information through a smartphone’s screen is not ideal, as it can cause users to become inattentive to their surroundings. 

AR head-mounted displays (HMD) have the potential to overcome this issue by integrating navigational information into the user’s field of view (FOV). While work has explored the design of turn-by-turn egocentric AR navigation interfaces, little work has explored the design of exocentric interfaces, which provide the user with an overview of their desired route. In response to this, we examined the impact of three different exocentric AR map displays on pedestrian navigation performance and user experience. Our work highlights pedestrian safety concerns and provides design implications for future AR HMD pedestrian navigation interfaces.