Designing a Visualization User Interface

The design and production of multimedia and interactive maps could seem to have more in common with video and film production than digital map production and software development. The processes employed apply different methodologies to map making and the talents and skills of the personnel involved are different, diverse and, in many cases, unlike those needed for conventional mapping. The evaluation of multimedia geographical information products could be undertaken using a different manner than that employed for evaluating conventional. This paper discusses the unique evaluation requirements for multimedia mapping and GIS products which include multimedia. It then outlines how the methods used to evaluate multimedia publications might be used as a model for developing an evaluation procedure unique to this type of contemporary mapping commodity.

Towards a Methodology for the Evaluation of Multimedia Geographical Information Products

Interactive Multimedia for Mapping

The proliferation of home and business computers has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of animated maps in private, institutional, commercial, and academic settings. As authoring software that allows the production of such maps becomes cheaper and easier to use, animated maps will continue to become more numerous and sophisticated. This increase in the number and complexity of animated maps and the resultant need to automate their design and production calls for novel cartographic approaches. This paper stems from a project involving the design of animated maps for a typical multimedia product. An important element of the animations were the transitions between maps of different scales. An explanation of an algorithm to choose map scales suggests how aesthetic judgments can be incorporated into the automated production flow for the finished product.

The Production of Smooth Scale Changes in an Animated Map Project

La cartographie et la photogrammetrie ont toujours ete liees etroitement l'une a l'autre, et l'on souligne dans cet article l'idee que la cartographie est un systeme de representation des donnees a trois dimensions, plutot qu'un ensemble de procedes de fabrication d'un produit, la carte. Il est evident que la definition de la cartographie doit changer au fur et a mesure que des evolutions apparaissent dans sa pratique. Apres un apercu du contexte historique de ce theme, on examine les relations qui se developpent entre le cartographe et l'utilisateur du produit. On analyse les problemes fondamentaux du transfert d'informations du monde reel, complexe, a un produit cartographique generalise et l'on decrit la technologie qu'utilise cette discipline. Les applications recentes de la cartographie concernent la cartographie des risques naturels, les relations avec les SIG, les cartes qui se lisent par le toucher, et la representation electronique de l'hydrographie, produits qui tous sont issus de cheminements pilotes en aval, par le client

The frontiers of cartography: mapping a changing discipline

The development of the video disc and similar devices for storing pictures for subsequent display on computer screens has led to video images of conventional printed maps being used in a number of systems. Little consideration appears to have been given to the factors influencing the visual processing of such images. An experiment was carried out to determine if subjects' map reading ability is affected by this change of media. Results show that there was significantly better performance obtained when using conventional paper maps in comparison to their video images as displayed by the Domesday system.

D. Forrest

Papers

An examination of the difference between the interpretation of screen based and printed maps