Informing online and mobile map design with the collective wisdom of cartographers

Abstract

Despite the large and growing prominence of online and mobile maps, they have not been broadly and systematically examined with a lens informed by traditional cartography. Using an approach rooted in cartographic theory and a unique dataset of 382 publicly-displayed local maps, we identify the collective wisdom of hundreds of cartographers with respect to a number of cartographic design decisions. We compare our findings to the approaches taken in popular online and mobile map platforms and develop suggestions for incorporating the collective wisdom of cartographers into these systems. Our suggestions include the adoption of location-aware cartography, in which cartographic approaches are intelligently varied based on the type of location being viewed. We provide mockup designs of online and mobile maps that implement our suggestions and discuss means by which the surprising gap between online and mobile maps and traditional cartography may be bridged.