SGER - Studying Map Interaction Behavior

地理地图是当今广泛使用的最传统、最熟悉、最重要的可视化工具之一。人们越来越多地认识到可视化在提供对海量数据的洞察以支持各种领域的关键推理和决策方面的重要性。此外，在过去的几年里，在线获取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绘制禽流感爆发地图、军事测试、当地天然气价格等等，应有尽有。这代表着从专业制图员开发的几个通用地图可视化到最终用户正在开发的许多特定地图可视化的根本转变。随着后者利用越来越多的地图工具，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和提高可用性。然而，对地图使用的研究主要集中在视觉表示的人工制品上，而对用户与这些表示交互的动态行为的研究很少。创建满足用户需求的地图可视化的指导原则很少，这可能会限制这些关键可视化的有效性。因此，有必要对人们如何使用地图来支持日益增长的可视化和视觉分析的努力进行深入的调查。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，以满足这一需求。具体而言，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？)用户如何处理地图的复杂性？地图可视化元素如何支持用户行为？交互如何在用户和任务环境中变化？具体地说，该项目将包括两个探索性的观察性研究，对执行各种基于地图的分析任务的用户进行研究，检查他们与地图可视化的交互行为。结果将确定可用性问题和用户面临的问题，以及特定任务和更广泛地跨任务的常见交互模式。这些初步结果将为交互式地图可视化的使用和设计理论奠定基础，促进我们对用户如何解释地理可视化的理解。由于这个问题几乎没有得到学术界的关注，这个项目将是对基本上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性增长，项目成果具有巨大的潜力，可以为地理可视化和以人为中心的计算确立变革性的方向。成果还将为根据用户和任务背景自动调整和个性化地理可视化方面的工作奠定基础。更广泛的影响地理可视化是一种强大的机制，可以支持涉及空间信息的批判性思考和决策，而地理地图是使用最广泛的地理可视化。了解人们如何使用地图和与地图互动将指导这些关键可视化的改进设计，潜在地影响到广泛的领域，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.