In public areas such as shopping malls, airports, hospitals, libraries, trade fairs, etc., it can be difficult, particularly if one is new to the area, to determine where one is relative to a desired target. A visitor to the public area, particularly when pressed for time, will not want to walk a long distance before finding his desired target location, such as a shop, doctor's practice, or office. One possible solution to this problem, often found in some such public areas, is an overview in the form of a two-dimensional map erected at one or more strategic points such as close to an entrance or close to an escalator. However, in order to find out where he is in the public area and the direction in which he must go, a user must first locate the overview itself.
Even if a customer has the time to locate and consult such an overview, the graphical presentation is not always clearly understandable. While one customer or visitor might comprehend at a glance the direction he should take, not everyone is able to understand such a map or overview, and some people have difficulty with orientation. An alternative to a two-dimensional floor plan displayed in a public area is an electronic map, for example a graphic layout of a public area for display in a hand-held device. A user of such a device can browse through different levels of the public area, and can plan a route to a destination. However, because many public areas such as shopping malls often include hundreds of shops or stores, it is not always feasible to include the names of each of these shops on such an overview. To further complicate the issue, a shop might close down and be replaced by another, requiring that these physical overviews are manually altered or replaced whenever such changes take place.
Obviously, this type of maintenance is costly and time-consuming, and, if not carried out punctually, may cause dissatisfaction or frustration on the part of the user if, for example, he cannot locate his desired target on the overview, or worse, if he is directed to a no longer existing shop in the public area. Added to this is the problem presented by different languages. A tourist or non-native visitor to the public area may simply not be able to understand the meaning of the text in the overview.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a better way of guiding a user to a desired target while avoiding the problems mentioned above.