Impact of Expertise on Interaction Preferences for Navigation Assistance of Visually Impaired Individuals

Navigation assistive technologies have been designed to support individuals with visual impairments during independent mobility by providing sensory augmentation and contextual awareness of their surroundings. Such information is habitually provided through predefned audio-haptic interaction paradigms. However, individual capabilities, preferences and behavior of people with visual impairments are heterogeneous, and may change due to experience, context and necessity. Therefore, the circumstances and modali-ties for providing navigation assistance need to be personalized to different users, and through time for each user. We conduct a study with 13 blind participants to explore how the desirability of messages provided during assisted navigation varies based on users' navigation preferences and expertise. The participants are guided through two different routes, one without prior knowledge and one previously studied and traversed. The guid-ance is provided through turn-by-turninstructions, enriched with contextualinformation about the environment. During navigation and follow-up interviews, we uncover that participants have diver-sifed needs for navigation instructions based on their abilities and preferences. Our study motivates the design of future navigation systems capableofverbositylevel personalizationin ordertokeepthe users engaged in the current situational context while minimizing distractions.