This study focuses on the user-interface of the route guidance system with an electronic map display. The ultimate goal of the study is to aid in designing electronic map displays that can deliver information to the user most efficiently and expeditiously with minimum confusion. To evaluate the efficiency and understandability of map displays, laboratory experiments were designed and conducted in this study. In the experiments the subjects were presented with electronic map displays of different attributes and asked to perform a set of tasks. Their understanding of the information contents was measured based on the outcomes of the tasks. In addition subjective ratings of the ease of using the maps were obtained. using the experimental data thus collected, a structural equations model system is developed to explain the understandability of a map display in terms of the subject's attributes and the characteristics of the display. The experimental procedure and the modeling results are presented in this paper.
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