Modes of Interaction with Navigation Apps

Despite many HCI studies of diverse factors shaping users’ navigation experiences, how to design navigation systems to be adaptable to all of these factors remains a challenge. To address this challenge, we study general variations in users’ intended navigation experiences. Based on 30 interviews, we find that interactions with navigation apps can be subsumed under three “modes”: follow, modify, and background. For each mode of interaction, we highlight users’ key motivations, interactions with apps, and challenges. We propose these modes as higher-level concepts for exploring how to enable the details of navigation support to be adaptable to users’ generally intended navigation experiences. We discuss broader implications for issues of efficiency and overreliance in our experience of the physical environments through navigation apps.