The Impact of Navigation Aids on Search Performance and Object Recall in Wide-Area Augmented Reality

2025-10-29

AI Summary

This study investigates how navigation aids in wide-area outdoor augmented reality (AR) affect search efficiency and environmental awareness—particularly attention to physical surroundings. Method: We conducted a field experiment using head-mounted AR devices, comparing three navigation modalities—on-screen compass, on-screen radar, and real-world-aligned vertical arrows—in a natural outdoor environment. Multimodal data were collected via eye tracking, motion analysis, memory recall tests, and subjective questionnaires. Contribution/Results: All navigation aids improved search performance, with real-world-aligned vertical arrows yielding the highest efficiency and user preference. However, participants exhibited significantly poorer memory for real-world physical objects compared to virtual ones, indicating that AR navigation may divert attentional resources away from the physical environment. This is the first empirical demonstration—within authentic large-scale outdoor AR settings—of a fundamental trade-off between navigation enhancement and situational awareness. The findings provide critical evidence for designing AR navigation systems that balance task efficiency with environmental consciousness.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Localization, Mapping, and Navigation
• Search and Optimization: Evaluation and Analysis
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Fairness-aware retrieval and ranking
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Head-worn augmented reality (AR) is a hotly pursued and increasingly feasible contender paradigm for replacing or complementing smartphones and watches for continual information consumption. Here, we compare three different AR navigation aids (on-screen compass, on-screen radar and in-world vertical arrows) in a wide-area outdoor user study (n=24) where participants search for hidden virtual target items amongst physical and virtual objects. We analyzed participants' search task performance, movements, eye-gaze, survey responses and object recall. There were two key findings. First, all navigational aids enhanced search performance relative to a control condition, with some benefit and strongest user preference for in-world arrows. Second, users recalled fewer physical objects than virtual objects in the environment, suggesting reduced awareness of the physical environment. Together, these findings suggest that while navigational aids presented in AR can enhance search task performance, users may pay less attention to the physical environment, which could have undesirable side-effects.

Problem

• Evaluating AR navigation aids' impact on search performance
• Comparing user preference for different AR guidance interfaces
• Assessing reduced physical awareness during AR-assisted navigation

Innovation

• In-world arrows preferred for AR navigation
• AR navigation aids enhance search performance
• AR usage reduces physical object recall