Designing across map use contexts: a research agenda

Abstract

The explosion of map use in the past few decades as part of everyday activities, accelerated through the digital production and dissemination of maps and the availability of low-cost, location-aware devices, has made the job of cartographers and map display designers more challenging. Yet, how do these recent changes affect effective map design? Can we accurately predict which designs will work for a given context? We investigate the concepts of design transferability and context and their potential to help us create map design outcomes that are effective for varying map use situations. We then present a model for operationalizing map use context to support evaluating map design transferability and pose several open research questions that need to be answered to support operationalizing map use context. This is followed by a research agenda that identifies research opportunities related to key research needs that will underpin transferable map design. RÉSUMÉ

Geospatial Information Visualization and Extended Reality Displays

“…What we need is the right information in the right place at the right time for the decisions we are trying to make or the activities we are trying to support. Thus, understanding the context in which information and visualizations of information are going to be used (Griffin et al 2017)-what data, by whom, for what purpose, on what device-is fundamental to designing appropriate and effective visualizations. For example, ubiquitous sensor networks and continuous imaging of the Earth's surface allow for us to collect real-time or near real-time spatial information on fires and resources available to fight fires, and firefighters would benefit from improved situation awareness (Weichelt et al 2018).…”

“…Representations must be developed to render the components and characteristics of big spatial data through visual interfaces (Çöltekin et al 2017). We also need to know more about how to design interactive tools that make sense to end users to manipulate and learn from big spatial data (Griffin et al 2017;Roth et al 2017).…”

Navigation in Indoor Environments: Does the Type of Visual Learning Stimulus Matter?

“…In following the call to improve consistency and detail in reporting experimental design and to support the transparency, transferability and reproducibility of research studies [69,85], a detailed description of our experimental design is provided below. A brief overview of the experiment's structure and stages is shown in Figure 2.…”

Visualizations Out of Context: Addressing Pitfalls of Real-Time Realistic Hazard Visualizations

“…The following considerations should be addressed: a. Query perceptions of the likelihood of an event and the severity of an event separately to not conflate perceptions of risk with probability alone. The role visualizations play and the audiences' perceptions of them is also highly context dependent [26] and influenced by factors such as interface design and presentation format [75,76]. These contextual factors influence the extent to which the misleading nature of visualizations may be problematic.…”