Supporting users’ navigation is a fundamental feature of mobile
guides. This paper presents an experimental evaluation
comparing three different ways of providing navigation guidance
by combining visual and audio directions during guided
city tours. The three considered solutions differ in the way
audio directions are augmented with visual directions: a
traditional map-based solution, a combination of a map and
photographs of the area, a combination of large arrows and
photographs. The results of our evaluation show that when
the map is combined with photographs that clearly indicate
the direction to the user or when the map is replaced by a
combination of directional arrows and photographs, users’
performance is significantly better. Moreover, the combination
of map and photographs was highly preferred by users.
