Perspective maps in mobile devices – just style or proper function?

Navigation systems are popular mobile applications (Raper et al 2008). These systems support the user in his wayfinding task. Usually modern navigation devices offer a perspective map view in addition to the traditional 2D map view. But does this additional map view improve the user’s ability to find his way correctly and fast or can perspective map views be only interpreted as nice gimmicks? This question is in line with Zipf’s (2003) call for more empirical research on visualization alternatives in mobile maps. We decided to create own empirical data in a usability test in order to answer this question, using a sample size which enables reasonable statistical interpretation of the result.