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

TL;DR

This study investigates how three navigation aids—on-screen compass, on-screen radar, and in-world vertical arrows—affect search performance and environmental awareness in wide-area outdoor AR. Using a within-subject design (n=24) with gem-search, audio-response, and object-recall tasks, the authors show that all aids improve search efficiency relative to a no-aid baseline, with in-world arrows receiving the strongest user preference. However, navigation aids, particularly head-stabilized on-screen cues, shift attention toward virtual annotations and reduce recall of physical objects, signaling potential compromises to situational awareness. The findings inform AR UI design by balancing navigation support with preserving attention to the real world, suggesting practical guidance for minimizing cognitive load and clutter in outdoor AR systems.

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.

Figures (15)

• Figure 1: A 3D model of the experiment area, augmented with virtual outdoor furniture and other virtual objects.
• Figure 2: A summary of the different design parameters of this experiment.
• Figure 3: Visuals of the three navigation aids the participants saw. Images not to scale. (a) In-world arrows, vertically above each gem. (b) On-screen radar, with a forward-up design and gems indicated by hollow green hexagons. The yellow triangle in the centre indicates the position of the user in the space, and the blue cone represents the field of view. (c) On-screen horizontal compass, green hexagons above the line indicate gems in front of the user (with distance to each gem above the hexagon) and white hexagons below the line show gems behind the user.
• Figure 4: Total session time in seconds plotted as a function of navigation aid and bin. Participants took significantly longer to complete a trial with no aid compared to the three aid conditions. Among the three aids, there was a benefit of arrows over the other two aids in the early bins (bin 1 & bin 3), but this did not extend to the last bin of the trial. Participants also took significantly longer in later bins, as fewer gems remained to be found (bin 4 $>$ bins 2,3 $>$ bin 1), especially in the arrows and no aid conditions. For this and all following figures: Error bars $=$ SEM.
• Figure 5: Head rotation plotted as a function of navigation aid and bin. Head rotation was greater in the no aid condition compared to any of the three navigation aids, suggesting that search was less efficient when there was no aid. Head rotation was also greater in the arrows condition compared to compass and radar, suggesting that the on-screen aids enabled a more focused search pattern than the in-world arrows.