Inclusive Navigation Design: Exploring How Tactile Cues Shape Trust and Exploration Intention for Visual Impaired User

Abstract

Visually impaired individuals often encounter uncertainty and limited autonomy when navigating complex indoor environments, such as museums,sports centers. While tactile cues have been proposed as compensatory aids, few studies examine how tactile guidance influences psychological security and actively motivates exploration behaviors in such contexts. This research investigates the mechanism by which tactile interaction supports trust, emotional security, and spatial agency. Study 1 employed formative interviews with ten visually impaired participants and two accessibility designers to extract design needs and key tactile guidance elements.Study 2 implemented a lightweight tactile-guidance prototype within a simulated museum environment and collected 227 survey responses to examine how tactile design influences users’ sense of security, exploration intention, and spatial dominance. Results show that tactile guidance increases users’ exploration intention and spatial dominance primarily through sense of security as a key mediating mechanism. This highlights how emotional reassurance enables tactile cues to support more confident and self-directed navigation behaviors, offering actionable implications for inclusive museum wayfinding systems.