Studying spatial memory and map navigation performance on projector phones with peephole interaction

Abstract

Smartphones are useful personal assistants and omnipresent communication devices. However, collaboration is not among their strengths. With the advent of embedded projectors this might change. We conducted a study with 56 participants to find out if map navigation and spatial memory performance among users and observers can be improved by using a projector phone with a peephole interface instead of a smartphone with its touchscreen interface. Our results show that users performed map navigation equally well on both interfaces. Spatial memory performance, however, was 41% better for projector phone users. Moreover, observers of the map navigation on the projector phone were 25% more accurate when asked to recall locations of points of interest after they watched a user performing map navigation.