How dynamic information layout in GIS interface affects users’ search performance: integrating visual motion cognition into map information design

Abstract

ABSTRACT Given that the unreasonable layout caused by the surge of map information will dramatically reduce the user's operation performance, this paper proposed a 3 V layout method based on human visual motion cognition. According to the visual flow method, two visual search experiments were designed to study the influence of label layouts and graphic overlap rates on users’ search efficiency. By testing users’ reaction time and gaze behaviour, it was found that L-LR layouts arranged in a vertically symmetrical way had the best search performance among the four layouts. The overall performance of L-LR and L-TB layouts arranged in a unidirectional and symmetrical way was better than that of L-UG and L-EP layouts in the graphic and number search task. However, L-UG and L-EP layouts performed better than L-LR and L-TB ones in the graphic search under lower overlap rates. Moreover, it is also worth noting that the performance of graphic search was significantly higher than that of number search, indicating that users distinguished the location-based information represented by graphics better than that by text. The results provide a certain theoretical basis and application value for the map information layout of the GIS interface.