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Lars Harrie

Lars Harrie

Professor

Lars Harrie

Cartographic Design Matters : A Comparison of Thematic Polygon Design

Author

  • Andreas Kiik
  • Marcus Nyström
  • Lars Harrie

Summary, in English

The number of web services providing cartographic data is increasing. A main challenge is to enable a user to combine these services, not only from a technical perspective, but also from a cartographic one. One common use case for these services is to create mashups based on thematic polygons on top of background maps. In this study we compare four cartographic designs of thematic polygons: only boundaries, transparencies, hatches and icons. The aim of the comparison is to investigate whether the designs are good for identifying the extent of the polygons and if the design disturbs the reading of the background map. The comparison is based on an eye-tracking study, where 24 participants performed polygon identification tasks as well as background search tasks. The study revealed that hatches were more efficient than the other designs for polygon identification. Hatches had significantly shorter total fixation times as well as scanpath lengths, possibly since the participants were able to identify the extent of the polygon solely based on the interior (i.e. the hatches), while for the other designs the participants were extensively reliant on the boundaries. However, the results also indicate that the hatches design disturbs the reading of the background map more than the other designs; hatches also appear visually unpleasant for many users. Since each design had its strengths and weaknesses, we recommend producers of services for thematic data to provide several designs so users can select an appropriate design for their own use cases.

Department/s

  • Lund University Humanities Lab
  • Centre for Geographical Information Systems (GIS Centre)
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration

Publishing year

2017-01

Language

English

Pages

24-35

Publication/Series

Cartographic Journal

Volume

54

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Maney Publishing

Topic

  • Physical Geography
  • Psychology

Keywords

  • cartographic design
  • eye-tracking
  • geoportals
  • thematic polygons
  • visualization

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0008-7041