SGER - Studying Map Interaction Behavior

地理地图是当今广泛使用的最传统、最熟悉和最重要的可视化工具之一。人们越来越认识到可视化在提供对大量数据的洞察力以支持各种领域的批判性推理和决策方面的重要性。此外，在过去几年中，在线访问地图数据和基本集成工具方面发生了一场革命，使用户驱动的应用程序从远程考古研究到“mashhups”，绘制禽流感爆发、军事测试、当地天然气价格等等。这代表了一个根本性的转变，从由专业制图师开发的少数通用地图可视化到由最终用户开发的许多特定地图可视化。由于后者使用越来越多的映射工具，因此需要新的交互方法和信息管理方法来降低可视化的复杂性并提高可用性。然而，对地图使用的研究主要集中在视觉表示的人工产物上，很少关注用户与这些表示交互的动态行为。对于创建满足用户需求的地图可视化，几乎没有指导方针，这可能会限制这些关键可视化的有效性。因此，有必要深入调查人们如何使用地图来支持可视化和可视化分析方面不断增长的努力。本提案通过使用人机交互技术来研究地图可视化的可用性来解决这一需求。具体来说，该项目将解决以下四个问题：1)用户如何与地图可视化交互？2.） 用户如何处理地图的复杂性？3)。地图可视化的元素是如何支持用户行为的？4)。交互在用户和任务上下文中是如何变化的？具体来说，该项目将包括两项探索性观察研究，用户执行各种基于地图的分析任务，检查他们与地图可视化的交互行为。结果将确定用户面临的可用性问题和问题，以及特定任务和更普遍的跨任务的通用交互模式。这些初步结果将为交互式地图可视化的使用和设计奠定理论基础，促进我们对用户如何解释地理可视化的理解。由于这个问题很少得到学术界的关注，这个项目将是对大部分未经检验的想法的一次尝试。此外，鉴于最近交互式、在线和以用户为中心的地图的爆炸式增长，项目成果具有为地理可视化和以人为中心的计算建立变革方向的巨大潜力。结果还将基于用户和任务上下文自动适应和个性化地理可视化。更广泛的影响地理可视化是一种强大的机制，可以实现涉及空间信息的批判性思维和决策，地理地图是最广泛使用的地理可视化。了解人们如何使用和交互地图将指导这些关键可视化的改进设计，潜在地影响各种领域，如公共卫生、环境科学和应急规划。该项目从交互行为的角度对地理可视化进行了首次评估。我们的初步结果将为交互式地图的设计提供指导，并展示交互式研究在地理可视化中的价值。

Geographic maps are one of the most traditional, familiar, and important visualizations in widespread use today. There is increasing understanding of the importance of visualization in providing insight into a vast amount of data to support critical reasoning and decision making in a variety of domains. Moreover, in the past few years, there has been a revolution in online access to map data and basic integration tools, enabling user driven applications from remote archaeological research to "mashups" mapping avian flu outbreak, military testing, local gas prices and far more. This represents a fundamental shift from few general-use map visualizations developed by expert cartographers to many specific map visualizations being developed by end users. As the latter utilize a growing number of mapping tools, new interaction methods and information management approaches are needed to reduce visualization complexity and improve usability. Yet research into map use has focused primarily on the artifact of visual representation and very little on the dynamic behavior of users' interactions with those representations. There are few guidelines for creating map visualizations that meet user needs, potentially limiting the effectiveness of these critical visualizations. Thus, there is a recognized need for a deep investigation into how people use maps to support the growing efforts in visualization and visual analytics.This proposal addresses that need by using Human Computer Interaction techniques in to study the usability of map visualizations. Specifically, the project will address the following four questions: 1.) How do users interact with map visualizations? 2.) How do users deal with map complexity? 3.) How do elements of the map visualizations support user behavior? 4.) How do interactions vary across user and task context?Specifically, the project will consist of two exploratory, observational studies of users performing a variety of map-based analysis tasks, examining their interaction behavior with map visualizations. Outcomes will identify the usability problems and issues that users face, as well as the common patterns of interaction for particular tasks and more generally across tasks. These initial results will lay the groundwork for theories on the use and design of interactive map visualizations, advancing our understanding of how users interpret geovisualizations. Because the problem has received very little scholarly attention, this project will be a foray into largely untested ideas. Further, given the recent explosion of interactive, online, and user-centered mapping, project outcomes have significant potential to establish transformative directions for geovisualization and human-centered computing. Outcomes will also ground work on automatically adapting and personalizing geovisualizations based on user and task contexts. Broader ImpactsGeovisualization is a powerful mechanism to enable critical thinking and decision making involving spatial information, and geographic maps are the most widely used geovisualization. Understanding how people use and interact with maps will guide the improved design of these critical visualizations, potentially impacting a wide variety of domains, such as public health, environmental science, and emergency planning. This project represents a first-of-its-kind evaluation of geovisualizations from an interaction behavior point of view. Our preliminary results will provide design guidelines for interactive maps and demonstrate the value of interaction research in geovisualization.