Designing user-centered mobile wayfinding application for library indoor navigation

Abstract

Library users frequently confront difficulties in navigating through the library complex to find different formats of resources and services they seek. The rapid adoption of mobile technology made it possible to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a wayfinding process. Incorporating users’ interests and preferences into the design procedure of a wayfinding application is an imperative task for developing library indoor navigation tools. With applying mixed research methods and innovative data collection technique (e.g., recording users’ interactive behavior on smartphone) to examine sixteen (16) smartphone users’ interaction with a wayfinding application on an academic library website, the authors identified a series of important usability problems existing in a wayfinding application, discovered users preferred interactive features, and proposed new labeling and navigation systems of such a kind of wayfinding application.