Emotional response to map design aesthetics

Fabrikant, Sara Irina; Christophe, Sidonie; Papastefanou, Georgios; Lanini-Maggi, Sara; Kwan, Mei‐Po; Lin, Hui

doi:10.5167/uzh-71701

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This reluctance to accept the maps may reflect how tile maps are increasingly popular in the media and perhaps less so in industry and academia, and that most participants were professionals in a geomatics-related field. This is a generalization and would be interesting to validate with a larger, more diverse sample size of more varied geographic backgrounds, but is a reminder of work by Fabrikant et al (2012) that found cartographic expertise can predictably influence emotional responses to unusual colour schemes on topographic maps.…”

Section: The Tile Mapmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Some research has looked at emotional responses to colours used in maps or Web GIS applications (Skarlatidou et al 2011;Fabrikant et al 2012;Weninger 2015) but research on affective and emotional properties of thematic map types is limited, and mainly about cartograms. Preston (2008) differentiates between mapping techniques that intentionally and unintentionally evoke emotional responses; the latter shift power from the map author to the map reader.…”

Section: Sdg Indicator Sdg Target Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several authors call for more attention to the intersection of emotions and maps (e.g., Preston 2008; Aitken and Craine 2009;Craine and Aitken 2009;Elwood 2010;Fabrikant et al 2012;Griffin and McQuoid 2012;Caquard and Cartwright 2014;Caquard 2015;Griffin et al 2017;Roth et al 2017;Caquard 2018), to affect and influence geospatial technologies and practices more broadly (Kwan 2007), to study the potentially emotional message a map tries to communicate (McCleary 2003;Muehlenhaus 2012), and to investigate emotions, data, and data visualizations (D'Ignazio and Klein 2016; Kennedy and Hill 2017).…”

Section: Sdg Indicator Sdg Target Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Feminist cartography and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality: Emotional responses to three thematic maps

Pirani

Ricker

Kraak

2019

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Key Messages• We researched users' emotional states before and after interacting with three map types visualizing data about female genital mutilation/cutting from the Sustainable Development Goals. • We found that maps evoked users' emotions, but some users found the maps to be clinical and neutral despite the sensitive phenomenon they portrayed. • Our findings support feminist critiques of existing cartographic methods as rational, disembodied science.Thematic maps facilitate spatial understanding of patterns and exceptions. Cognitive ability, spatial cognition, and emotional state are related, yet there is little research about map readers' emotions. Feminist critiques of cartography recognize emotion and affect as legitimate experiences on par with quantitative ways of knowing. We conducted an online survey to measure users' affective states before and after engaging with three thematic map types. The maps showed data from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to achieve gender equality, on the proportion of girls and women aged 15 to 49 who have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting. Participants viewed a choropleth, a cartogram, and a repeating icon tile map; completed map-related tasks; rated certain map qualities; rated their affective states before and after engaging with the maps; and answered open-ended questions. The maps piqued curiosity and evoked emotions for most users, while some users perceived the thematic maps as clinical or neutral despite the sensitive topic. After viewing the maps, female participants who were affected expressed deeper engagement in their open-ended comments than males. Traditionally, cartography construes the human experience as male experience and denies or trivializes women's experiences. Our findings corroborate feminist critiques of this disembodiment and entrenched rational rhetoric of maps.La cartographie féministe et l'objectif de développement durable des Nations Unies sur l'égalité entre les genres: les réactions émotionnelles à trois cartes thématiques Les cartes thématiques facilitent la compréhension spatiale des schémas types et des exceptions. Il y a pourtant très peu de recherches au sujet des émotions des lecteurs de cartes, notamment sur la capacité cognitive, la cognition spatiale et l'état émotif qui sont tous reliés. Les critiques féministes de la cartographie reconnaissent l'émotion et l'affect comme étant des expériences légitimes au même niveau que les façons quantitatives d'apprendre. Dans cette optique, nous avons effectué un sondage en ligne afin de mesurer l'état affectif des utilisateurs avant et après avoir consulté trois types de cartes thématiques. Les cartes affichaient des données associées à l'objectif de développement durable des Nations Unies pour réaliser l'égalité entre les genres, soit des cartes sur la proportion de filles et de femmes âgées de 15 à 49 ans qui ont subi une mutilation des organes génitaux féminins (excision). Les participants ont examiné une carte choroplèthe, un cartogramme et une carte carrelée d'icô...

show abstract

Section: The Tile Mapmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Sdg Indicator Sdg Target Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sdg Indicator Sdg Target Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Feminist cartography and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality: Emotional responses to three thematic maps

Pirani

Ricker

Kraak

2019

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Other cartographic research has shown that map readers' preferences are strongly affected by contrast (Fabrikant et al 2012;Limpisathian 2017;Brewer 1992). Future research should emphasize consistency in contrast, lightness, and saturation in terrain representation to avoid this potentially confounding variable.…”

Section: M Itations An D Fu Rth Er Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Limpisathian (2017) tested the visual contrast of maps at multiple scales and asked map readers to rank a series of color and contrast schemes based on their clarity and aesthetic qualities. Similarly, Fabrikant et al (2012) tested a small group of map readers' arousal levels while reading several design iterations of the same map to investigate aesthetic preferences. Cartographers have also examined the micro-aesthetics in map typefaces (Guidero 2016).…”

Section: Aesth Eti Csmentioning

confidence: 99%

That’s a Relief: Assessing Beauty, Realism, and Landform Clarity in Multilayer Terrain Maps

Douglass¹,

Fish²

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Terrain maps are often composed of shaded relief along with other raster layers which we call thematic terrain layers to create aesthetically pleasing and clear maps of physical geography. Despite that the interplay of layers is of primary concern to a cartographer, much of the research on terrain mapping has focused on studying terrain layers individually. This research aimed to fill this gap by evaluating the effect of combining shaded relief with thematic terrain layers and assessing ratings of beauty, realism, and landform clarity in an exploratory online user study. Specifically, we tested the combination of: manual, multidirectional, and ray-traced shaded relief with three thematic terrain layers: hypsometric tinting, land cover, and orthoimagery. There are five main findings from this exploratory study: (1) there was a direct correlation between beauty and realism scores, (2) the manual relief we tested was consistently rated lowest for beauty, realism, and landform clarity, and orthoimagery was rated the highest for beauty and realism, (3) shaded relief was more influential than thematic terrain layers on landform clarity ratings, (4) participant’s geographic familiarity had a significant impact in four specific instances of the user study, and (5) neither shaded relief or thematic terrain layers were the sole contributors to map reader perceptions of beauty, realism, or landform clarity. We conclude by identifying limitations in our stimuli design and presenting ideas for future research studies on terrain design.

show abstract

A Framework for Color Design of Digital Maps: An Example of Noise Maps

Weninger

2014

Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Emotional response to map design aesthetics

Cited by 10 publications

References 7 publications

Feminist cartography and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality: Emotional responses to three thematic maps

Feminist cartography and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality: Emotional responses to three thematic maps

That’s a Relief: Assessing Beauty, Realism, and Landform Clarity in Multilayer Terrain Maps

A Framework for Color Design of Digital Maps: An Example of Noise Maps

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About