2026-09-10T09:45:02Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27571 2026-09-10T05:38:43Z ddc:004 open_access

Representing Retail Wayfinding: A Requirement-Driven Study Design for Non-Visual Supermarket Navigation (Short Paper) Zhou, Xiang Timpf, Sabine retail wayfinding blind and low-vision shoppers indoor wayfinding verbal route descriptions requirements modelling First-visit supermarket shopping is a demanding case of non-visual indoor wayfinding. Blind and low-vision shoppers must make sense of functional zones, work through repetitive aisles, and confirm shelf areas while also dealing with queues and checkout. We use retail wayfinding to describe how movement, in-store search, and shelf-level confirmation are coupled. Retailer-held 2D layouts and product placement data can support verbal guidance, but many dynamic, sensory, and social conditions remain outside these data. We outline a requirement-driven mixed-methods study with 52 blind and low-vision participants: 30 in Study A, 30 in Study B, with eight participants taking part in both. Audio-recorded dialogue, verbal route descriptions, observer-coded event traces, and post-task interviews will be used to examine how shoppers request spatial information, confirm progress, and manage uncertainty from store-level orientation to shelf-level confirmation. The expected output is an initial coding matrix showing what needs to be represented, at what scale, and when confirmation or assistance becomes necessary in non-visual retail wayfinding. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Xiang Zhou and Sabine Timpf 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 393, 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.27 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275718 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.27 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode