Evaluating Effectiveness of Interactivity in Contour-based Geospatial Visualizations

TL;DR

A contour-based interactive geospatial visualization designed for analytical tasks and shows that the interactive features aid in their data analysis and understanding in terms of spatial data extent, map layout, task complexity, and user expertise.

Abstract

Contour maps are an essential tool for exploring spatial features of the terrain, such as distance, directions, and surface gradient among the contour areas. User interactions in contour-based visualizations create approaches to visual analysis that are noticeably different from the perspective of human cognition. As such, various interactive approaches have been introduced to improve system usability and enhance human cognition for complex and large-scale spatial data exploration. However, what user interaction means for contour maps, its purpose, when to leverage, and design primitives have yet to be investigated in the context of analysis tasks. Therefore, further research is needed to better understand and quantify the potentials and benefits offered by user interactions in contour-based geospatial visualizations designed to support analytical tasks. In this paper, we present a contour-based interactive geospatial visualization designed for analytical tasks. We conducted a crowd-sourced user study (N=62) to examine the impact of interactive features on analysis using contour-based geospatial visualizations. Our results show that the interactive features aid in their data analysis and understanding in terms of spatial data extent, map layout, task complexity, and user expertise. Finally, we discuss our findings in-depth, which will serve as guidelines for future design and implementation of interactive features in support of case-specific analytical tasks on contour-based geospatial views.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: Illustration of two interactive contour-based geospatial visualizations: (A) temperature intensity in New York City and (B) precipitation intensity in the contiguous U.S. recorded at a certain time. The interactive features are intended to support visual analysis of the contour regions.
• Figure 2: Overview of the quantitative evaluation for contour-based interactive geospatial visualization: We conducted a crowd-sourced study to measure user performance in analysis tasks. We compared (A) a traditional static contour map with (B) a contour-based interactive geospatial visualization. The results (C) suggest that interactive features significantly improve performance in complex tasks such as spatial data association, categorization, clustering, and ranking.
• Figure 3: Summary of 62 participants' educational qualifications, computer usage, geospatial expertise, and visualization expertise.
• Figure 4: The accuracy results by tasks, map types, and map layouts
• Figure 5: The task completion time results by tasks, map types, and map layouts