Going My Way: A User-aware Route Planner (CHI 2009 – Round 1)

Going My Way: A User-aware Route Planner (CHI 2009 – Round 1)

By: Jaewoo Chung, Chris Schmandt

Summary:
When people get directions they typically find a nearby location that they are familiar with and then get directions to the desired location from there. “Going My Way” attempts to do something similar. It first learns about where you are familiar traveling with, then identifies the areas that are close to your desired location and finally presents a set of directions based off of familiar landmarks. This implementation was done with a phone that had a server for accessing GPS data that it stored as well as a UI for requesting directions. Part of the work done in this paper was to determine what landmarks were memorable and why. To do this they asked users sets of questions and locations of different places. They discovered that people remember places near an intersection better and remember more unique places instead of a chain store. The next part was to have users use “Going My Way” and try to find their way to certain locations. The application got user specific landmarks and found out that users typically use less than a quarter of the amount of landmarks that were stored in its database. The results of this directions test showed that “Going My Way” is far more useful when the user is traveling in an area that the user is somewhat familiar with so that they recognize the landmarks easier. Some users said that it was easier to visualize the location when they got to explore all of the landmarks around it.

Discussion:
I thought this was a very interesting paper because this is the way that many people get directions. I can’t count the number of times where I have been going out to eat and not sure where I’m driving to. When I ask for directions 95 percent of the time the response I get is similar to “Right across the street from ” or “Behind the shopping center that is in.” I think that if this was further modified so that users could use it in unfamiliar areas then it would be way more useful.