https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5416-3564
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ABSTRACT
This paper presents an empirical study assessing the usability and utility of different interfaces for visualizing large sets of point features in mobile maps. We focus on interfaces that present only a subset of all features and provide interaction functionalities for browsing through all of the information. We compare an established zoom-and-pan interface against three recently proposed interfaces that do not require a change of map scale or section. Each of the novel interfaces implements one additional, specialized interaction functionality for presenting all information without the need to zoom or pan. As a first step towards user-centred design, we investigate how well the specialized interactions are adopted by users. Given a visual search task, we show that participants performed significantly fewer zooming and panning operations using the novel interfaces than when using the zoom-and-pan interface. Further, we observe advantages in terms of search accuracy and the extent of the visible map area.
Data availability statement
The data used in our study are derived from Yelp at https://www.yelp.com/dataset. The particular datasets are openly available in figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20318538.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Sven Gedicke
Sven Gedicke finished his Master of Science in Geodesy and Geoinformation at the University of Bonn in 2018. Currently, Sven continues his studies as a PhD candidate and research associate at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation (AG Geoinformation) at the University of Bonn. His main research interest is in computational cartography, which includes map labelling on small-screen devices and the automation of map generalization.