The Design of Electronic Map Displays

Abstract

This paper presents a cognitive analysis of a pilot's navigation task and describes an experiment comparing a new map display that employs the principle of visual momentum with the two traditional approaches, track-up and north-up. The data show that the advantage of a track-up alignment is its congruence with the egocentered forward view; however, the inconsistency of the rotating display hinders development of a cognitive map. The stability of a north-up alignment aids the acquisition of a cognitive map, but there is a cost associated with the mental rotation of the display to a track-up alignment for tasks involving the ego-centered forward view. The data also show that the visual momentum design captures the benefits and reduces the costs associated with the two traditional approaches.

The effects of maps on navigation and search strategies in very-large-scale virtual environments.

“…This may help to explain the differences found by Aretz (1991), Barfield et al (1995), and Wickens et al (1996) when participants performed world-centered tasks using either a forward-up, or a north-up map.…”

Effects of display frames of reference on spatial judgments and change detection

“…The second FOR was a small 2-D north-up contour map located in the center of the top third of the screen. This view showed the entire area of interest, including the participant's location and a rotating wedge which indicated what part of the environment was currently being viewed in the 3-D egocentric view (Aretz, 1991). As the participant panned the environment, the wedge rotated in the corresponding direction, which helped keep the participant oriented to the correct direction and support direction judgments.…”

Egocentric organization of spatial activities in imagined navigation

“…Specifically, a number of studies (e.g,. Artez, 1991;Hintzman, O'Dell, & Arndt, 1981;Shepard & Hurwitz, 1984) have documented that people are slower to decide between left and right when their egocentric reference frame is not aligned with the environmental frame in which the decision must be made (e.g., when deciding whether to turn left or right on the basis of a nonrotatable north-up map while traveling south). Similarly, Avraamides (2002), in a study that uses the spatial framework paradigm, provides evidence that participants have greater difficulty discriminating left from right in the conditionsin which their ecological and egocentric frames are misaligned.…”