Exploring the Design of a Mixed-Reality 3D Minimap to Enhance Pedestrian Satisfaction in Urban Exploratory Navigation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The authors have partially fullfilled some of the comments that I did in the prevous round. Please, be more synthetic and try not to repeat information in abstract, introduction, discussion and conclusions.
I agree with some of the comments of the other reviewers, so please try to reply to them and addapt them to your manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the review in this new round.
In this review round, we mainly revised the English language and style. Firstly, we checked the minor issues of mistyping and grammar from the review report. We also polished the expression of some sentences. In addition, we deleted the repeated parts in the introduction as well as the discussion and conclusion to make the article clear and concise. Finally, because we revised a lot of minor parts, we made a track change for the editors and reviewers easy to check.
Point1:Please, be more synthetic and try not to repeat information in abstract, introduction, discussion and conclusions.
Response 1:We deleted the repeated information in the abstract, introduction, discussion, and conclusion to make the article readable. In addition, we also made some detailed revisions to make it clear to explain our work. All the revisions can also be found in the track change file. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
I have previously reviewed the first version of this submission, and has actually recommended acceptance. So, I do not see significant problems in the paper and do not have many suggestions for improvement.
As I understand, for the new version of the manuscript the authors have performed experiments with more subjects (28 instead of 18), somehow changing the mean level of experience with VR/AR technologies in the sample. Also, the significance levels have been raised. Both these changes somehow improve the study validity (which is of course a positive thing), but the main conclusions remain largely the same.
Also, the Discussion part of the manuscript has been modified and extended, for which the authors should be commended as well.
So, I recommend accepting the paper for publication in the Future Internet journal.
Minor issues (the new parts of the text need some proof-reading):
* text out of the right margin in line 414
* line 501: "it might be because the participants were familiar with the exploratory activities in the first trial with normal mode, which they lost some curiosity in the second trial." - the sentence needs re-consideration.
Author Response
Thank you very much for the review in this new round.
In this review round, we mainly revised the English language and style. Firstly, we checked the minor issues of mistyping and grammar from the review report. We also polished the expression of some sentences. In addition, we deleted the repeated parts in the introduction as well as the discussion and conclusion to make the article clear and concise. Finally, because we revised a lot of minor parts, we made a track change for the editors and reviewers easy to check.
Response: Thank you very much for your positive comments. For the sentence that needs to be reconsidered:"it might be because the participants were familiar with the exploratory activities in the first trial with normal mode, which they lost some curiosity in the second trial."
In this sentence, we wanted to explain the lower score with the simplified map mode of Q2 in GUEQ in the exploration task. To clearly explain this result, we revised the expression to make a more scientific and detailed explanation. Thus, we deleted this sentence in 4.2.2 Qualitative Results and added a more detailed expiation in 5.3 User Experience of the discussion section.
The revision is:
“However, for question two (Q2) in GUEQ in the exploration task, the participants rated a higher score in normal map mode. In other words, most participants considered they could explore things more with normal map mode. According to the interview, some participants mentioned that the task with the simplified map mode was clear to show the target distribution and route information, so sometimes they only followed the route to arrive at the target. On the contrary, in the task with normal map mode, they need to recognize the more complicated spatial information, which they will pay more attention to every point of interest surrounding them. Another possible reason we found in the interview was that one participant mentioned that he preferred the complete information for exploration and the simplified mode for precise navigation. Because the simplified map looks like a tool, in contrast, the mirrored normal mode looks like the map in the treasure hunt game.”
Other minor revisions can also be found in the track change file.Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript proposes a mixed reality 3D minimap interface in exploratory navigation via a HMD, in order to provide a novel map interface and improve spatial learning and decrease workload during urban exploration to enhance the user experience.
My first comment is to clarify in the title and main descriptions that this Minimap is proposed for pedestrians, not for driving navigation (it was my first idea when I read the title).
It is also very important to define Mixed Reality versus Augmented reality. What’s the difference? Why is it focused on MR (as the title says) and not AR? Actually, it is difficult to understand that experimenting in VR can give conclusions for AR applications, although I accept it as it is one of the limitations explained at the end of the paper.
In general, the text is too long for the contents that it describes. The extension of introduction, background, discussion and conclusion can be shorten easily. In general, there are some excerpts that are repeated unnecessarily. E.g. “The aim/objective of this work is…”
Additionally, it is not very clear to the reader if the authors are talking about the present work or previous works developed also by themselves. Line 65: “We proposed a novel mixed reality…” Now or in the past? So, as it is in the introduction, it is difficult to understand if the 3 contributions of lines 82-97 are referring to the present work or a previous work. It the former, I don’t think it is very suitable to announce them in the Introduction.
Related to the organization of the paper:
There are some parts of section 2 that could belong to Introduction. The last paragraph to that section is not a motivation, is an intention. Motivation explains the need and origin of that intention.
Some of the paragraphs of the Discussion look more like conclusions. Some others are just repetitions of the results or the experiments.
Last section related to Conclusions is too long. In fact, it also includes Further research and Limitations. I would consider to distinguish them clearly.
Section 4.1 speaks about a preliminary work. Was it conducted before the experience of this manuscript or is it the first phase of this experiment?
In section 4 there are mentioned different modes (3D, 2D, aerial) but previously there were also mentions to the 2 modes of the minimap (normal and simplify). Please, distinguish them better for clarifying the terms to the reader.
Figures 1, 2 (top), 3 and 8 are too small and difficult to see when the paper is printed.
L263: “In the reminder of this section…” Explain this better.
L93: HMD is used. In the rest of the text it says head-mounted displays. Please, uniform it consistently. The same with VR, AR, MR, etc.
L490: “the overall NASA-TLX score was significantly (p<0.05) lower”. Was that it mean? What does it measure? Is it good or bad to be lower?
The citations of the references along the text are not in order of appearance. I don’t know if the journal accepts it like that.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The work presents a comparative study between two distinct views of mixed reality maps.
Here are some concerns that should be clarified and some suggestions that can be considered by the authors to improve their work:
- The work appears excessively long in relation to its actual content. Section 1 (introduction) and section 2 (background and motivation) could be merged and make reading easier.
- The preliminary study section 4.1 does not appear essential for the work.
- The number of users involved in the main study is too small in order to draw solid conclusions.
- The main study compares two versions of mixed reality maps, a full version and a simplified version. It is not clear to me how the simplified version was made, and what were the criteria for removing one feature or another.
- The authors deal with the theme of mixed reality for maps but in the study, they use a prototype based on virtual reality. This should affect the authors' conclusions. Then, the authors should justify and clarify it.
The research questions in section 5 should be reported in the introduction consistently.
The links cited in the bibliography are not in the format of the journal
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Exploring the Mixed Reality 3D Minimap Interface to Support Urban Exploratory NavigationIn the considered manuscript, the authors implement and test a novel user interface for a minimap. The testing is done in the form of a user study, where they collect quantitative data and perform statistical analysis for the two experimental conditions. Overall, I find the problem addressed in the paper rather interesting and practical, since minimaps and navigation software are gaining in popularity, and exploration of new and more efficient ways for interacting with them are important. Hence, my opinion is that the paper is relevant for the Future Internet journal.
The main disadvantages of the paper that prevent me from recommending acceptance in the present form are 1) poor theoretical background and specification of the authors' approach to the minimap interface design and 2) problems with construct validity (spatial learning) and external validity (conclusions that do not entirely follow from the results). Also, the language and writing style of the paper need considerable improvement, since currently some grammatical and stylistic problems prevented me from understanding the authors' ideas.
First, I believe that the authors should explain what is the big idea of their interface design. What is the approach exactly and why do the authors expect improvements from it? Why wasn't it used before by the others (here, I believe a literature review should be necessary, particularly to justify novelty). How exactly does it translate into particular design decisions in the UI?
The claims of "a novel map interface" and "our method" deserve more detailed explanation and specification. I believe this should be done in a dedicated section, following the standards common for UI design papers in HCI.Also, half of the Abstract is dedicated to explaining the background of the study, but I would rather recommend that the authors describe the interface and the underlying design ideas.
Second, in my opinion, RQ1's conceptual validity suffers.
The authors talk about spatial learning (even 402 "improve the knowledge learning of spatial cognition", which appears to be something else), but do not justify why it is equal to the number of POI covered. Such a measure is not obvious at all. For instance, in [1] they consider several measures of spatial learning and find that "path followed" is the preferred one.
More efficient navigation (less time spent on the task) may well have other explanations. For instance, the authors write 545 "the simplified minimap provided them with a clear distribution of valuable points of interest in a bird’s-eye view", but it may well be a task-specific advantage.
So, the terms (see e.g. citation from line 402 above) must be fixed, and the use of the measures justified.
A related problem is that some conclusions do not follow from the results. For instance, 691: "we found that except for walking in navigation, the simplified 3D minimap interface could also be used in activities such as jogging, running and bicycling" - but the authors did not test any of the activities in their study. The Conclusions section should be re-considered and such statements removed, or the authors should explain how exactly they arrive to them. I would generally recommend less imagination and more scientific rigor in this particular case, though I appreciate that the authors try to provide the readers with ideas of practical application of the results.
Misc:
295: "We All the participants" - mistype
343: "in which the appearance is impressed" - I could not get the meaning
528: "a novel way to give more imagination" - sounds strange and not very scientific
The numbers in Fig. 15-17 should be made larger
[1] Khotskin, N.V., Fursenko, D.V., Bazovkina, D.V. et al. Automatic Measurement of Spatial Learning Characteristics in Mice in an Underlit Morris Water Maze. Neurosci Behav Physi 45, 771–775 (2015).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I have read the authors' replies and the updated version of the manuscript. I commend the authors for the good work they did addressing the comments and improving their work. I am particularly satisfied to see detailed description of the interface in Section 3, the re-stated research questions, and the streamlined Conclusions. So, I recommend accepting the manuscript for publication.
Some minor issues:
p.7: "there exit studies" -> "exist"
p.30: "both two modes" -> "both modes" is probably better
