Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
4- Conclusions and perspectives
Usability and HCI research applied to map interfaces are growing fields of
interest for cartography, and advocates user testing as a main acknowledg-
ment for successful design. Many of the procedures for this kind of
user-oriented approach take into consideration user preferences and its
importance should be carefully included in map design principles. Here it
is important to realize that cartographic communication and map and cogni-
tion studies have as one of their main principles the fact that effectiveness
is directly dependant on the realms of map-user and map-tasks. Results
obtained from this first stage of research cannot be generalized and should
only be applied to decision-making processes of a similar nature and if
possible for similar user characteristics.
Nielsen and Levy (1994) studied the same subject of this research about
computational interfaces and their survey concludes that there seems to
exist some strong positive association between user's performance and their
average subjective satisfaction. In the present study, the most preferred
map was not the most efficient for all tasks and statistical tests demon-
strated that there is evidence that subjective preference and the intuition of
map-users are not related to effectiveness. However, for some cases - or
some visual variables - maybe this relationship can exist, since this study
points out that there is a slight indication of success when people handle
the same subset of maps that they consider the most efficient, with propor-
tional maps achieving significantly better results.
This article provides objective evidence that Brazilian users seem to prefer
colored maps and believe such representations to be more effective for the
studied decision-making process. Also for this process, it was noted that
performance decreases for reasoning related tasks, and maybe this could be
related to the need of a deeper analysis of data evolution through time. If
the assumption is correct, this factor is supposed to be minimized by the
introduction of animated maps, built for this experiment's 2
nd
stage, which
is currently taking place. Garlandini and Fabrikant (2009) argue that
changes in size and color value are easily localized and guide viewers'
attention in thematic 2D map displays.
Results of the first stage of the present research are similar to Hegarty et al.
(2009), who showed that people seems to prefer more complex forms of
representation and this is not related to effectiveness, for different map use
tasks. These authors argue that user preferences, even those of domain ex-
perts, are not a good indication of effectiveness.
