Designing across map use contexts: a research agenda

Figures & data

Figure 1. A model for operationalizing map use context to support evaluating design transferability. The left image shows how context information emerges through the interaction of four situational components (map, user, activity, environment). The right image visualizes emergent context information as a triangular pyramid; context nearer the apex is considered more relevant.

Figure 2. The basic function of our context model. As conceived by Tomaszewski and MacEachren (2012) (left figure), context is produced from situational information via human reasoning processes. Likewise, we posit that context is produced from information that arises from a map use situation (right figure); relevance of contextual factors is the selection filter used to determine which context information is essential.

Table 1. Examples of potential design solutions for map design modifications made to accommodate contextual differences.

Contextual difference	Design solution, situation A	Design solution, situation B
Color vision impairment	Stoplight color scheme (red–yellow–green) used to communicate traffic congestion information	Represent traffic congestion on streets using line dash spacing instead of color hue
Familiarity with the city	Label every street close to the current location of the vehicle	Reduce the number of street labels to reduce visual complexity, especially because the different design introduced to accommodate color vision impairment increases visual complexity
Time pressure	Provide the most direct and least complicated route	Provide the route with the shortest travel time, even if it is a longer distance or is more complicated
Map interface	Enter origin and destination using touchpad	Allow voice-activated, hands-free interaction with the map, to enable re-routing to avoid traffic congestion while the driver is underway

Tomaszewski, B., & MacEachren, A. M. (2012). Geovisual analytics to support crisis management: Information foraging for geo-historical context. Information Visualization, 11(4), 339–359. doi: 10.1177/1473871612456122

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