ABSTRACT
Location-based services (LBS) are an exciting paradigm for how we interact with our devices, other people, and our environment. They can assist with a variety of tasks, everywhere and anytime. The integration of sensors and computing power in today’s smartphones destines them to become an integral part of our daily life. However, this bears the danger that we tend to rely on their availability and, thus, become dependent on these LBS, and in the end will be unable to perform these services ourselves if they should become unavailable. This chapter will discuss this issue of users’ growing dependency on LBS, specifically with respect to navigation assistance, which is one of the predominant LBS. The discussion will focus on the (lack of’) spatial learning as a key cognitive effect of LBS usage, the keyhole problem as one reason for this lack of learning, and some avenues to mitigate the negative cognitive effects of using LBS.
