Map Users Research Articles

Intergenerational differences in the use of maps: results from an online survey

Abstract. Since the end of the 20th century, the widespread availability of information and communications technology (ICT) has led to an increased use of web-based maps that have supposedly changed the use of geospatial information. Although previous studies focused on the conceptual or technical aspects of web maps, few studies have conducted an empirical analysis of the diversity of map usage. In particular, intergenerational differences in the use of digital maps have apparently expanded owing to the generation gap in the skills needed to use ICT devices. In this study, I examined variations in map usage by paying attention to the characteristics of the millennial generation. An online survey of 624 people who signed up for participation was conducted with a research company in 2018. They were sampled equally by gender and age group and were from the Tokyo metropolitan area. A questionnaire was designed to gather data about their current state of map use, their usage of ICT devices, their degree of geospatial awareness, and demographic attributes. The difference in map usage patterns between generational groups was examined using statistical methods. Analysis of the data revealed that most people use web maps while conventional paper maps are still widely used by the middle-aged and the elderly. In particular, intergenerational differences in map usage were observed: younger people prefer using web maps with mobile devices for checking locations but older people are still using conventional paper maps. Among the web maps available, Google Maps was used by the majority of respondents, especially by the younger age group. The next most frequently used was Yahoo! Maps, which was mainly used by the middle-aged and older people while Apple Maps was also preferred by younger people. More than 80% of web map users browse the map with a smartphone; however, middle-aged and older groups tended to use maps with PCs. An analysis of conventional map use revealed many people use tourist maps, maps on signboards, and in-car navigation systems. However, some intergenerational differences were observed. Young people use fewer road maps and in-car navigation systems while elderly people use more housing maps and topographic maps. An analysis of the relationship between map use and geospatial literacy revealed that younger respondents preferred digital maps to paper maps and tended not to ask someone else for directions but relied on ICT tools to find their way. Since some studies have pointed out that the accustomed use of navigation tools may have negative effects on people’s geospatial awareness, young people’s dependence on web maps may reduce their concern with maps and geography, which is characteristic of the millennial generation.

Automated summit spot height generation for modern topographic mapping

Abstract. Spot elevations published on historical U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps were established as needed to enhance information imparted by the quadrangle’s contours. In addition to a number of other features like road intersections, section corners, lakes and water wells, labels were routinely placed on mountain peaks, local high points, passes and saddles. While some elevations were established through field survey triangulation, many were “dropped” during photogrammetric stereocompilation. The average accuracy, which varied with method, terrain, and map vintage, was on the order of ± 10 feet. Today, inexpensive consumer devices deliver comparable accuracy using the Global Positioning System (GPS). Professional equipment can achieve even better accuracies. These methods have replaced the field- and funding-intensive traditional triangulation methods in the geographic sciences. However, since GPS measurements require visiting the feature location, a national dataset containing high-accuracy spot elevations has not yet been created. Consequently, modern US Topo maps are devoid of mountain peak or other spot elevations. Additionally, no government agency is currently mandated to create one. Still, US Topo map users continue to demand the display of spot heights, particularly mountain peak elevations. As lidar data are collected through the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), the source for higher accuracy spot heights increases. Therefore, a pilot study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of automatically generating elevation values at summits named in the Board on Geographic Name’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), using 3DEP data. As the 3DEP incorporates more lidar data, these values should become increasingly more accurate. The first step in the automation process involved “snapping” GNIS summits to the highest and most accurate nearby point (pixel) in the 3DEP one-third arc second seamless dataset (1/3 a-s). Development of this step was completed in a prior study and will be reported elsewhere. In Step 2, a process similar to Step 1 was implemented to identify the highest pixel in the 3DEP one-meter dataset (1-m) from an area defined by a one-pixel buffer around the snapped point pixel. After finding the highest pixel in the 1-m dataset, the same process for Step 2 was repeated on the lidar point cloud dataset (LPC). In the latter case, the highest lidar point within the buffered area was chosen where there were more than one, which was the case in most instances. In the case that the next higher resolution data were unavailable, the summit spot elevation was set to the value obtained from the lower resolution layer. Hence, if 1-m data were unavailable, but LPC data did exist, the program in its current state was unable use the higher resolution data. This is due to the fact that the 1-m data are employed to drive the software to a more precise location of the summit. Without that intermediate step the method fails to identify the correct LPC point. Work in progress is aimed at overcoming this disadvantage, which is particularly important until the time when the 1-m dataset is populated for the entire nation. The National Geospatial Program estimates the completion of lidar acquisition by 2023. Processing from acquisition to update of the 1-m dataset, including quality assessment and revisions, currently requires between two and three years. Resulting elevation values are compared to those published by Peakbagger.com and TOPOZONE.com. Preliminary results from 40 summits indicate that values derived from lidar are generally higher, whereas those populated from the 1/3 arc-second are generally lower. A thorough understanding of these relationships will require the evaluation of more points.

Multivariate thematic mapping using fractal glyphs

Abstract. Cartographers often face the task of depicting multivariate data on a single map. As spatial data gets ever more voluminous, and in particular, complex (multifarious), this challenge will have to be overcome with increasing regularity. Many solutions have been implemented in answer to situations like this: choropleths with trivariate colour or texture schemes, or point symbols in the form of star plots, ray glyphs or more naturalistically, Chernoff Faces (all of which could be sized proportional to a further variable).Point symbols with a naturalistic basis have a mimetic appearance that makes for unambiguous communication of data. Chernoff faces in particular work so well due to their resemblance to, and human ability in reading, human faces. Importantly, facial features are easily linked with data through manipulation of their size, position or orientation (e.g. small to large nose; frowny to smily mouth).Computer-generated fractals offer further potential solutions to the multivariate challenge in the naturalistic category. Examples such as the Barnsley fern leaf exhibit the fractal property of self-similar geometry over multiple spatial scales to create a realistic fern appearance. Fundamentally, the fern figure is under full control of a few numerical parameters that are simple to link with underlying attribute data. If these fractal glyphs are plotted as points on a map then we have a novel and potentially rich basis for multivariate mapping to address the big data challenge.We can generate a Barnsley fern leaf fractal using the Iterated Function System (IFS), driven by parameters for geometric operators: displacement, rotation and scaling (Table 1). Each of these transforms can be linked with a variable, which is the basis for multivariate representation. Figure 1 illustrates how the appearance of the Barnsley fern is affected by scaling, overall orientation and angle of fern frond. In Table 1, cells 2a and d are used for scaling, 2b for orientation and 3d / 4d for frond angle. Our demonstrating example is based on “natural cities” (and within them, “natural streets” that define the city outline, Figure 2a), which have been calculated through the head/tail breaks method (Jiang, 2013) to capture a size-based emergent organic hierarchy. For natural streets, street network junction points have been triangulated, and triangular edges divided into two groups, those longer than the mean edge length (the “head”) and those shorter (the “tail”). This process is recursively applied to the head, each time adding a tier to the street size hierarchy. Natural cities are calculated through a similar process, but on the basis of mean settlement area. In Figure 2b, natural city parameters have been used on the top 11 New Zealand cities in the following way: scaling has been linked to number of breaks (this is the ht-index, which indicates how complex the city network form is - Jiang and Yin, 2014), angle of fronds to percentage size of head and overall orientation to North (pointing right) and South Islands (left). Rigorous testing needs to take place to measure the effect of fractal multivariate symbols compared with conventional cartographic means of representing the same data (which may include separate variable maps and the multivariate conventions listed above). Usability of fractally enhanced maps can be assessed along efficiency (how long it takes to perform a specific map task), effectiveness (how correct that task was performed) and satisfaction (covering ease, engagement and enjoyment of the map user in performing the map-based tasks).Beyond multivariate mapping, these fractal glyphs are being investigated as one of the building blocks in generating data-based artworks (through the use of convolutional neural networks for style transfer – Moore and Jiang, 2017). This symbolisation based on self-similar graphics is an extension of a fractally-oriented vision for cartography (Jiang, 2018). It also addresses a part of the current cartography and Big Data agenda addressing spatial Big Data representation using artworks (Robinson et al, 2017).

Map Use in Transit Control Centers: Mapping geographic information flows

Map Use in Transit Control Centers: Mapping geographic information flows

A comparative analysis of visualization methods of travel time for schematic road map

Abstract. Schematic map has higher recognition efficiency due to its simplified shape, thus it is widely used in the repesentation of transportation (such as metro map). Because manual design of schematic map is time consuming, many researchers have focused on automatic generation of schematic map. Existing automatic generation methods mainly focus on the development of methods of simplification of road maps. In practice, time information is also important for map users. Several methods on the visualization of time information on schematic maps have been proposed, such as TimeCoutours method (Nicholas et al. 2006) and adding time cues to schematic maps (Haverkort 2014). However, these methods have not been compared and evaluated, which is the aim of this study.Existing methods mainly use the “hue, lightness, shape, size, style” and their combinations for map foreground and background. This study evaluates the existing methods from three aspects: usability, efficiency and aesthetic. For example, 1) “With the representation of time information, whether it reduces the clarity of road presentation” evaluates usability, 2) “Is it visually clear for the differences of the time information among roads?” evaluates the validity of the methods aiming at map foreground, 3) “Is it visually clear for the differences of the time information among area?” evaluates the effectiveness of methods for map background, 4) “After adding time information, compare the beauty with figure a.” evaluates aesthetic. There are 30 questions in this questionnaire. 20 volunteers with different majors and educational background are requested to give scores for these questions. A 5-score system is used in this questionnaire and contains “very hard or disturbing, hard or disturbing, commonly, good, very good”.The experimental results indicate that: 1) for the usability, the scores of color, size, color-brightness-size and lightness-size are higher than 3, and the usability is high, size-style variable is less than 2.5. 2) for the efficiency, the average score of the method of visualizing map foreground is higher than that of the method of map background. However, the score of background color-brightness-size method is higher than that of foreground style method, and both of them are higher than 3. 3) for the aesthetic, color-brightness-size, color-size and size are more than 3. Style method score less than 2. According the experiment results, it can be concluded that the color-brightness-size method and foreground-size method have higher effects for the visualization of time information. Next, this study will evaluate the applicability of each method and conduct eye-tracking experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of these methods.

From third-person to first-person cartographies with immersive virtual environments

Abstract. Recent cognitive research indicates that immersive virtual reality (VR) systems can increase the impact of visualization products through the formation of spatial presence, defined as a sense of “being there” in a virtual place. These findings make VR a highly interesting tool for cartography, but challenge the subject’s self-conception in different regards. The present article aims at highlighting the fundamental characteristics of geovisualization with immersive environments. We will approach the challenge of 1:1 representation with a typology borrowed from video game theory, where players can experience games from a first-person or third-person perspective. These two categories provide a useful framework to describe the basic difference between non-/low- and high-immersive geovisualization. In order to project the first- vs. third-person metaphor from a gaming to a cartographic mapping context, we will try to semiotically express the general process of map use in form of a triadic sequence, where the representation mediates between users and geospatial phenomena. Compared with common cartographic products, this mediation process is fundamentally different in VR systems, as immersive applications merge map user and map space. A set of future research questions and further considerations on first-person cartography will close the text. These considerations on first- vs. third-person visualization shall facilitate a conceptually better integration of IVE into current cartographic theory and practice.

Human-computer trust in navigation systems: google maps vs waze

This study investigates users’ trust and reliance toward navigation systems. Forty participants participated in the experiment comparing Google Maps and Waze that have different mechanisms (data-based vs community-based). Our findings revealed that users had higher trust in Waze than Google Maps, due to the higher degree of flexibility in information sharing. Next, we found that users tend to utilize the navigation application that they have used, implying that trust in navigation system is highly associated with trustors’ prior experience and familiarity. Lastly, Google Maps users changed their reliance on Google Maps to Waze upon experiencing Waze features. This study offers several implications that system designers: (i) must ensure that the system’s transparency is maintained, (ii) should profoundly analyze possible interaction between users and computer agents, (iii) should ensure that certain safety conditions are maintained despite the freedom of information sharing provided by the computer agent

Testing the Usability of a Software for Geospatial and Transport Modeling in Acute Stroke Service Planning.

Introduction: Geographic visualizations have been used to understand disease since the nineteenth century. We developed a software that creates simple visualizations which can be used as a decision support tool for pre-hospital acute stroke transportation planning. In this study, we test the usability of this software to improve user experience and assess the interpretability of the visualizations it produces as it relates to planning and optimizing stroke systems of care.Materials and Methods: Healthcare practitioners and administrators working within the acute stroke system in Alberta, Canada were invited to participate. Participants were randomized to either the geographic visualization or 2-D temporospatial diagrams. Using a standardized script participants were asked to complete tasks and interpret the visualizations produced by the software. The computer screen and audio were recorded. Recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using inductive thematic analyses. The number of errors made and time to task completion were also analyzed.Results: Eighteen participants (8 physicians, 5 healthcare administrators, 3 paramedics, and 2 nurses) were enrolled. Mean age was 41.22 years (SD: 10.55) and 8 participants were female. It took users a mean of 1.59 min (SD: 0.71) to complete all 10 tasks for the geographic visualizations and a mean of 1.08 min (SD: 0.33) to complete all 15 tasks for the 2-D temporospatial diagrams. Map users made a median of 2 errors (IQR: 4), 2-D temporospatial diagram users also made a median of 2 errors (IQR: 1.5). All but one map user correctly interpreted all maps, only three of the eight 2-D temporospatial diagram correctly interpreted all diagrams. In the qualitative analysis three common themes were identified: comments on the user interface, comments on the visualization tool(s), and suggestions for improvement. Most study participants mentioned that the software would be useful in their work.Conclusions: Healthcare professional from several different aspects of stroke care see geographic visualizations in transport decision making to be a useful tool. The software demonstrated high usability. However, several suggestions were made to improve user experience as well as additional features which could be developed and become the subject of future studies.

Mapping Emotional Cartography

Maps are somehow shy. They tend to hide their emotional side behind their clear lines, precise points, minimalistic words, numerical data and informative purpose. But when we scratch the cartographic surface, maps appear to be impregnated with all sorts of emotions. The emotions associated with the topic mapped and the ones evoked through the cartographic design. The emotions felt by the mapmaker while drawing the map and the ones felt by the map user when discovering it. The anger and sadness triggered by social injustices revealed on a map, or the simple pleasure felt while admiring a beautiful cartographic design. The emotional experiences we clearly remember and the most common ones we hardly notice or we simply forget. Beneath the surface, maps and mapping teem with emotions of all sorts. In this introduction to the special issue on Maps and Emotions, we will reveal the multiple relationships that exist between maps, mapping, and emotions.

Specifications of Cartographic Symbols for Indonesian Tactile Map

Visual impairment people require a means of information transfer which different from normal people, it needs to be touched or amplified by audio, including maps that apprise them of the objects and events occurring on Earth. Cartographic Sciences have developed tactile maps that offers touchable symbols for supporting blind and partially sighted people in recognizing the spatial distribution of geographical phenomena and their intercorrelation. Creating an informative tactile maps need a specific design of symbol, ancillary information, and map reproduction that meets the need and the capacity of its users. Unfortunately, there has been no international standardization for these map features that could be used as a foundation to build a standardization for our national tactile map. Therefore, this research adopted and modified the designs of tactile symbols published by the National Mapping Council of Australia, the Guidelines for Design of Tactile Graphics by American Printing House, the use of tactile variables by Vasconcellos, the Specifications of Topographic Elements Mapping by Bakosurtanal, and the application of visual variables of Bertin for cartographic mapping. The resultant symbol designs from the modification were applied to develop the tactile maps of Yogyakarta City on swell paper. Then, through interviews with map users (visually impaired people in the city), we evaluated these symbols from two aspects, comprehension of tactile variables and the types of the tactile maps required.

Visitor Perceptions and Effectiveness of Place Branding Strategies in Thematic Parks in Bandung City Using Text Mining Based on Google Maps User Reviews

The city of Bandung, Indonesia contains thematic parks which use certain themes to highlight the features of the park. They are also used as a branding strategy for the city as a whole. As social networking has become a type of media used by most global populations to share experiences and stories and to influence perceptions, and because online reviews are one way to get potential positive information about the success of a business or service, we analyzed online reviews from the Bandung thematic parks. We identified that thematic parks have an influence on the branding of the city of Bandung. Data collection involved data extraction from Google Maps user reviews. Text mining was used to collect the information attributes needed to determine the public perceptions of thematic parks. Data analysis was used to determine the extent to which a park can be a benchmark for place branding in Bandung. This research found that the influence of the thematic park concept is a good strategy for the city of Bandung. Online reviews show that thematic parks in Bandung are better known than non-thematic parks, and that thematic parks get very good ratings and good opinions from online reviewers. This information is expected to be a reference for developing the concept of thematic parks, especially in the city of Bandung, and it can be used by the government, architects, and urban designers to get a better understanding of the users’ perceptions and as a benchmark for similar projects.

Seeing by the Starbucks: The Social Context of Mobile Maps and Users’ Geographic Knowledges

Locating places using maps on mobile devices is an increasingly common practice in modern life. Such maps, including Google Maps and Apple Maps, inform and shape users’ geographic understandings. Existing research finds that those who navigate with mobile devices tend to recall landmarks rather than more comprehensive forms of geographic knowledge. However, most of that research gives minimal consideration to social context. Utilizing a qualitative approach and drawing on critical work on vision, maps, and digital data, we explore the contextual, economic circumstances that partially shape the production of users’ geographic knowledge through their consumption of mobile device maps. In a focus group experiment, mobile device map users frequently referred to a particular business, a Starbucks location, in a location-finding task. This indicates that social, contextual considerations are important to informing geographic knowledges; the map application providers’ business strategies, chiefly advertising, lead to an emphasis on business-type points of interest in mobile maps, which could shape users’ subsequent geographic knowledges. This has implications not only for mobile device use, but how technology companies’ maps potentially affect everyday understandings of the world around us.

FeaturEyeTrack: automatic matching of eye tracking data with map features on interactive maps

Map reading is a visual task that can strongly vary between individuals and maps of different characteristics. Aspects such as where, when, how long, and in which sequence information on a map is looked at can reveal valuable insights for both the map design process and to better understand cognitive processes of the map user. Contrary to static maps, for which many eye tracking studies are reported in the literature, established methods for tracking and analyzing visual attention on interactive maps are yet missing. In this paper, we present a framework called FeaturEyeTrack that allows to automatically log the cartographic features that have been inspected as well as the mouse input during the interaction with digital interactive maps. In particular, the novelty of FeaturEyeTrack lies in matching of gaze with the vector model of the current map visualization, therefore enabling a very detailed analysis without the requirement for manual annotation. Furthermore, we demonstrate the benefits of this approach in terms of manual work, level of detail and validity compared to state-of-the-art methods through a case study on an interactive cartographic web map.

MAPPING SPATIAL ACCURACY OF FOREST TYPE CLASSIFICATION IN JAXA’s HIGH-RESOLUTION LAND USE AND LAND COVER MAP

Abstract. Accuracy assessment of forest type maps is essential to evaluate the classification of forest ecosystems quantitatively. However, map users do not understand in which regions those forest types are well classified from conventional static accuracy measures. Hence, the objective of this study is to unveil spatial heterogeneities of accuracies of forest type classification in a map. Four forest types (deciduous broadleaf forest (DBF), deciduous needleleaf forest (DNF), evergreen broadleaf forest (EBF), and evergreen needleleaf forest (ENF)) found in the JAXA’s land use / cover map of Japan were assessed by a volunteered Site-based dataset for Assessment of Changing LAnd cover by JAXA (SACLAJ). A geographically weighted (GW) correspondence matrix was applied to them to calculate the degree of overall agreements of forest type classes (forest overall accuracy), and the degree of accuracy for each forest class (forest user’s and producer’s accuracies) in a spatially varying way. This study compared spatial surfaces of these measures with static ones of them. The results show that the forest overall accuracy of the forest map tends to be relatively more accurate in the central Japan, while less in the Kansai and Chubu regions and the northern edge of Hokkaido. Static forest user’s accuracy measures for DBF, DNF, and ENF are better than forest producer’s accuracy ones, while the GW approach tells us such characteristics vary spatially and some areas have opposite trends. This kind of spatial accuracy assessment provides a more informative description of the accuracy than the simple use of conventional accuracy measures.

Peranan Keterlibatan Dalam Memprediksi Perilaku Loyalitas Konsumen Pada Private Store Apparel Brands Di Banjarmasin

Private store brands as retail market conspicuous presence of other store brands. Advances in technology have changed the taste and preferences of the customers choice. What is perceived consumer can signifi cantly increase brand loyalty as a result of the marketing strategy. This study aims to identify the profi le of the customer based on demographic variables, determine the factors that infl uence purchasing decisions clothing brand, know the factors that infl uence brand loyalty engagement, and perceptual mapping user customers based products and factors involved. The analytical tool used is the Factor Analysis and Biplot. The results showed that the profi le of the customer private brands of apparel stores include male sex, age of respondents 20-29 years, not married, have no children, educated Bachelor, income Rp.2.000.000 , - until Rp2.999.999 , - . The structure of the factors that infl uence the purchase decision is personality, reference groups and families. While the most dominant factor is personality. Structure factors involved in predicting behavior and brand loyalty is a sign of risk importance, risk probability, pleasure , interest , and pleasure and risk probability . While the most dominant is the sign and risk importance. Customers are middle-income, unemployed self-employed , and private sector employees as well as highly educated close to all the factors that form factor . Keywords :involvement, brand loyalty, private store apparel brands

HMB-SSD: Framework for Efficient Exploiting of the Host Memory Buffer in the NVMe SSD

Host Memory Buffer (HMB) is a highlighted feature of the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol, which is the state-of-the-art storage interface for emerging storage devices such as Solid-State Drives (SSDs). HMB enables the underlying storage to make use of a portion of host memory for caching their address mapping information and/or user data, so that they can overcome the limited capacity of memory within the storage. This technology opens an opportunity to optimize the I/O performance cost-effectively by sharing the ample host memory with the severely resource-constrained device. However, it is challenging to study the HMB-based optimization techniques in the practical system because there is no SSD development platform supporting the HMB feature as well as the commercial SSD products veil their internals, not allowing a custom extension. Motivated by this limitation, this paper presents an HMB-supported SSD development platform called HMB-SSD, which is built by faithfully extending an open-source SSD emulator. HMB-SSD enables to easily integrate and evaluate I/O techniques for the HMB feature in an SSD emulator, which closely mimics the behavior of real devices. We demonstrate the proper operation of our platform and the efficacy of the HMB feature with a case study on write buffering. In our empirical study, the SSD storage achieves a large performance benefit with the HMB-based write buffer, yielding up to 86.2% better performance than that of without it.

An empirical test of household identification risk in geomasked maps

ABSTRACTGeomasking techniques displace point data to new locations in order to protect privacy while maintaining overall spatial distributions. If the end users of geomasked data are unaware that the data are masked, there is a risk that they will incorrectly associate individuals at the new locations with the masked data attributes. The probability of correct and false household identification depends on human understanding of whether maps contain masked coordinates and the spatial relationships of the points to contextual geographic data. Using a map-based experiment, this study finds that confidence in performing a household identification is substantially lowered when masked points are situated equidistantly between residential parcels. Despite initial notifications that data are masked, map users often report confidence in assigning masked points to specific households. Only map users who receive frequent notifications that the points are masked have reduced confidence in associating them with particular households, thereby lowering identification risk.

Correcting distortion errors in memory of object locations: the example of grid line spacing in topographic maps

ABSTRACTThe omnipresence of orientation, wayfinding and navigation tasks in everyday life calls for high-quality cartographic media that help people to solve their tasks in the best possible way. Modern maps should not only consider modern visualization techniques and design approaches but also knowledge on the map user’s cognitive processing. Previous studies of cognitive cartography and spatial cognition identified grids as suitable cartographic elements that can enhance the accuracy of cognitive representations of geographic space. Grid lines form grid cells and these cells subdivide a map layout into different regions. These regions seem to contribute to a categorization of cartographically represented contents. The categorical organization of a map provides a superordinate spatial structure that can improve the recall of object locations. An important parameter influencing categorization is the distance between grid lines (spacing/separation). A previous study suggested 5 cm (paper distance) spacing as being suitable for an accurate performance in recalling object locations in topographic maps. Based on a recall-memory-paradigm adopted from experimental studies in cognitive psychology, the experiments reported in the present study take up this value and aim at specifying the ideal value of grid line spacing for object location memory. The results show that previous findings can be extended. The results allow the proposal of ideal grid line spacing in a 6.5-7.5 cm range. These spacing values help to reduce spatial distortion errors in the memory of object locations, especially in maps with a low amount of visual details.

Meaningfulness of landmark pictograms reduces visual salience and recognition performance

Landmarks, objects in the environment used for orientation, navigation and the formation of cognitive maps are often represented in maps as pictograms. In order to support these tasks effectively and efficiently, landmark pictograms also need to be salient, as the map user needs to identify and process them quickly and easily. Two additional relevant characteristics for the usability of landmark pictograms are their meaningfulness and recognition performance. Meaningfulness is required to understand which categories of objects are represented by the pictograms. Ease of recognition prevents the necessity to consult a map repetitively and may support the formation of a cognitive map of the environment. In the present study, we investigated the relation between salience, meaningfulness and recognition performance of OpenStreetMap (OSM) pictograms and the potential effects of the visual complexity of pictograms on these usability characteristics. Salience was measured via eye fixations on specific pictograms, meaningfulness with an explicit continuous scale and recognition performance with a yes/no recognition memory paradigm. Statistical analyses showed that pictograms drew more visual attention if they were visually complex or if their meaning was inapprehensible or ambiguous. Less apprehensible pictograms were also recognized more often. Interestingly, the data indicated that longer fixations could lead to worse recognition performance. Long fixations on a pictogram may increase the likelihood of false recognition in subsequent situations where the pictogram is no longer valid or relevant. Based on the findings, we suggest balancing the meaningfulness and visual complexity of contiguous pictograms to enhance their recognition and to provide an optimal level of salience of single objects.

Evaluation of User Performance in Interactive and Static 3D Maps

Interactive 3D visualizations of geospatial data are currently available and popular through various applications such as Google EarthTM and others. Several studies have focused on user performance with 3D maps, but static 3D maps were mostly used as stimuli. The main objective of this paper was to identify differences between interactive and static 3D maps. We also explored the role of different tasks and inter-individual differences of map users. In the experimental study, we analyzed effectiveness, efficiency, and subjective preferences, when working with static and interactive 3D maps. The study included 76 participants and used a within-subjects design. Experimental testing was performed using our own testing tool 3DmoveR 2.0, which was based on a user logging method and open web technologies. We demonstrated statistically significant differences between interactive and static 3D maps in effectiveness, efficiency, and subjective preferences. Interactivity influenced the results mainly in ‘spatial understanding’ and ‘combined’ tasks. From the identified differences, we concluded that the results of the user studies with static 3D maps as stimuli could not be transferred to interactive 3D visualizations or virtual reality.