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A. Millonig:
"Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Human Spatial Behaviour for Customising Mobile Information Services";
Talk: KogWis 2008 - 9th Biannual Meeting of the Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft (GK), Dresden, Deutschland (invited); 09-28-2008 - 10-01-2008.

The development of mobile wayfinding tools for pedestrians is currently advancing at speedy pace. Recent approaches include location based information in order to provide practical information concerning optimal routes and useful facilities in the vicinity. However, one of the major issues in the development of mobile pedestrian navigation services concerns the poor understanding of pedestrian spatio-temporal behaviour. The abundance of potentially useful information aggravates effective information extraction for a person seeking specific navigational and environmental information.
To overcome this issue, several scientific approaches aim at a profound investigation of human spatio-temporal behaviour in order to create pedestrian interest profiles and to tailor information to individual needs.
This contribution describes a selection of most commonly used empirical techniques in monitoring human spatio-temporal behaviour. In particular, an ongoing study focussing upon a multi-method approach towards the observation, assessment, and interpretation of pedestrian walking patterns and route decision behaviour is presented. The study includes a combination of localisation and tracking techniques as well as inquiries concerning intentions, lifestyle attributes, socio-demographic characteristics, route quality preferences, and preferred wayfinding strategies. This combination of qualitative-interpretative and quantitative-statistical data will lead to the determination of a typology of lifestyle-based pedestrian mobility styles, which can serve as a basis to customise navigational and environmental information.