Effects of Cartographic Elevation Visualizations and Map-reading Tasks on Eye Movements

Abstract

Users prefer more realistic visualizations, even though they may be less efficient or even detrimental for a given task. In some previous studies, the evidence has shown that relief shading facilitates the landform interpretation while other studies have provided contrary results. In the present study, the effect of three different visualizations of elevation information on eye movements and performance was investigated in visual search, area selection, and route planning tasks. The results showed that the visualization of relief information affected the performance and eye movements in the visual search task. Overall, the eye movements differed between the search and area selection tasks, as well as between the search and route planning tasks. The result showed that the relief shading did not slow down the performance, either in terms of response time or eye movement measures.

Keywords:

• eye movements
• fixation
• saccade
• map visualization
• relief shading
• contour lines
• oblique view
• task effects
• spatial frequency

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This experimental study is part of a research project ‘Ubiquitous Spatial Communication’ (UbiMap). The UbiMap project was funded by the Academy of Finland, Motive programme, and was carried out in co-operation with the Finnish Geodetic Institute, Department of Geoinformatics and Cartography, and the University of Helsinki, Cognitive Science.