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

Johannes Schöning, Brent Hecht, Werner Kuhn

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

14 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationDIS 2014 - Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages765-774
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781450329026
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014
Event2014 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2014 - Vancouver, BC, Canada
Duration: Jun 21 2014Jun 25 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques, DIS

Other

Other2014 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver, BC
Period6/21/146/25/14

Keywords

  • Cartography
  • Geography
  • Local maps
  • Map design
  • Mobile maps
  • Online maps

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