PhD Defense Qi Ying
Heartfelt congratulations and thank you, Qi, for advancing the GIScience research agenda by empirically studying the "Effects of Mobile Maps on Spatial Learning Across Repeated Urban Navigation Episodes"
Qi Ying's empirical PhD project investigated how the use of GNSS-assisted mobile maps influences spatial learning during repeated urban navigation episodes. For this, Qi conducted a navigation experiment in a Zurich neigborhood where she collected behavioral data together with mobile eye-tracking and encephalography (EEG) measurements during participants’ navigation tasks.
Her ecological valid navigation research paradigm provides insights not only into how spatial knowledge develops during repeated map-assisted and non-map assisted navigation, but also into how navigators’ visual attention and brain activities are modulated during wayfinding. Qi Ying's findings contribute to a better understanding of how mobile navigation technologies shape the way people attend to, and learn from the environment they navigate through.
Qi’s disseration project emerged from an international research collaboration in the context of the UZH Digital Society Initiative (DSI) with Dr. Christopher Hilton, a cognitive psychologist at the TU Berlin. The Ph.D. committee was complemented by Prof. Dr. Maria Santos in the geography department.