Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
What do People prefer and What is more
effective for Maps: a Decision making Test
André Luiz Alencar de Mendonça,
Luciene Stamato Delazari
Federal University of Paraná - UFPR, Curso de Pós-graduação em Ciências Geodésicas,
Caixa Postal 19001, Curitiba - PR - Brazil
andremendonca@ufpr.br, luciene@ufpr.br
Abstract
Since the roles of intuition and affection in map use and the relationship
between these processes and the effectiveness in activities supported by
maps have not been completely measured, this paper intends to bring a
contribution to the discussion about the relationship between subjective
preference and objective performance. A series of experiments with
graduation students was carried out, asking students what they would pre-
fer as a desirable type of map to use for an analytical decision-making
process and then their performance of this process was measured. To en-
sure the validity of the experiment, maps used for this study were designed
using a social background as their theme, with analysts being asked to
decide where to invest public funds. The same experiment was conducted
first using a subset of paper maps (1
st
stage) and then using interactive web
maps (2
nd
stage). Three types of subsets of thematic maps were assigned
randomly among the respondents. Statistical tests were applied and the
correlation between preference and performance in this experiment was
measured. Results for the 1
st
step show that there is no significant variation
due to the technique used in the performance tests, and for this specific
subject, there is insufficient evidence to guarantee that user's preference
among map techniques can lead or is related to better performance. Also it
was noted that performance decreases for a reasoning related task, and
maybe this could be related to the need for a deeper analysis of data evolu-
tion through time.
