Knowledge-based wayfinding maps for small display cartography

Abstract

Small displays are currently gaining importance as interfaces for geographic information. More specifically, mobile position-aware devices, such as mobile phones equipped with globally positioning system, are increasingly used for mobile wayfinding assistance. But their constrained displays are too small to reproduce conventional maps without an increasing effort for the user. For example, they have to zoom in and out, and to scroll through the map to understand the details and configurational relationships of the involved entities of a route. This fragmentation of the information is not just inconvenient, but actually affects the cognitive processing of the given information and lowers the effectiveness of the assistance. One way to attack this problem is to tailor maps to the individual knowledge of a user. If an assistance system knows about the places and paths a user knows, it can generate maps according to this information: those parts of a route, which the user has good knowledge of, can be displayed with less detail and parts with no or little knowledge can be emphasised. However, the transformation of maps with respect to previous knowledge is a yet unexplored field and requires new and basic considerations about map generation. In this work, we analyse prototypical spatial configurations, geographic veridicality and assistance scenarios. We demonstrate first prototypes of personalised maps for small display cartography.