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In this paper we report results of an experiment that investigates the effects of mobile pedestrian navigation systems on the development of route and survey knowledge acquired by the users. In the experiment directions were presented incrementally step-by-step in different modalities (i.e. audio, graphics) and through different media (PDA, clip-on display). The experiment has been carried out in the field in a Wizard-of-Oz like study. Results show that as expected all subjects had problems in building up survey knowledge of the environment. In contrast, route knowledge was learned much better. We also observed a slight gender effect showing that women had an advantage of a visual presentation condition, whereas for men the presentation mode didn’t matter. Finally, we discuss some implications on the design of pedestrian navigation systems.