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G. Gartner:
"Pedestrian Navigation Services - A multimedia cartography approach to mobile Internet applications";
Talk: 21st International Cartographic Conference, Durban; 08-10-2003 - 08-16-2003; in: "Proceedings of the 21st International Cartographic Conference", (2003), 7 pages.

The availability of appropriate infrastructure for data transfer via air interfaces (GSM, GPRS, WAP, UMTS, WLAN) and the availability of related mobile devices (cellular phones, PocketPC, PDA) have initiated the development of so-called Location Based Services (LBS), including also map-based types of services.
In this context the development of guidance services, especially pedestrian navigation services, has become a major issue. Demand arises from the availability of mobile devices which have more and more access to the web and thus, to online services. Commercial companies or standardization consortia drive the development, which leads to technical solutions in many directions (protocols, positioning services, testbeds) but not necessarily to user-centered solutions: Usability and usefulness of available services are the critical points for the acceptance of these new products on a market and the satisfaction of customers. For the usability of Pedestrian Navigation Services issues like positioning, geodata management and "cartographic communication" are relevant. Guiding instructions for pedestrian navigation consist of spatially related information. The main elements derivable from routing models include starting point, target point, decision points, distances and route graphs. In order to communicate the resulting elements they have to be combined and translated into "communicative guiding instructions". Such a translation has to be seen in the context of the problem of matching a guiding instruction with the reality by the guided person, which is dependent on various influencing parameters.
In this paper it will be argued, that applying multimedia cartography techniques in this context can increase the usability and therefore acceptance of such services. So far, such "translations" of guiding instructions for the usage on wireless mobile devices are rarely based on user-centered approaches but on technical possibilities of existing mobile clients, using textual modes or cartographical modes only. The analysis of the "validity" of the used modes (especially maps) and experiences about different enhancements by using additional modes (e.g. images, VR-scenes, audio, augmented reality) or combined sets is aimed at in this paper. Finally some results of a "live" testbed pedestrian navigation service of TU Vienna will be discussed, proving the applicability of multimedia cartography techniques in the context of pedestrian navigation services.