Adaptive strategies of the visualization of electronic map

Abstract

The visualization of electronic map should be dynamic not only in the way of representation but also in the content creation in real time. In on-demand mapping, the user's favorites to map content are the key factor. It means that the design of electronic map has to consider providing several candidate visualizations according to the user's context. To settle on-demand question, the adaptive visualization has been an active topic in the field of map design in recent years. Based on practical experiments, this paper tries to present some adaptive strategies on the visualization of electronic map. Firstly, a conceptual framework of adaptive visualization is proposed, what includes the parts of the context interface, the map behaviors triggering factors, the adaptive mechanism, hierarchy control, output of result map, and the evaluation methods. We consider three main factors associated with the adaptive visualization: (1). the user's interactive map behaviors, (2). the context of the surroundings where the electronic map system stays, (3). the user category under their knowledge and experiences. The map behaviors include the ZOOM OUT, ZOOM IN, PAN, QUERY, ROTATION, and etc, which will result in changes for the contents and structures of map. These changes relate to the aspects about Map Extent, Scale, Location, Quantity, Quality, Direction, Density, and etc. The surroundings of map reading include the screen size, color display or B/W display, brightness, weather, special light scenery, speed of data loading, display sets, sound, time, event, culture, language, and etc. The map design has to provide different strategies to satisfy the periphery environment changes. According to some egocentric conditions, i.e., Location, Moving Orientation, Speed of Motion, and Self Properties, this paper gives some practical illustrations and descriptive maps. The classification of map users considers their knowledge, experience and specialty. We divide users into different levels. When the adaptive conditions change, each level takes a special action which will create a user-oriental outcome of adaptive visualization. This study is based on the practical design of electronic navigation map, and the subsections include several examples to illustrate different adaptive strategies.