The objective of interactive geographic maps is to provide geographic information to a large audience in a captivating and intuitive way. Storytelling helps to create exciting experiences and to explain complex or otherwise hidden relationships of geospatial data. Furthermore, interactive 3D applications offer a wide range of attractive elements for advanced visual story creation and offer the possibility to convey the same story in many different ways. In this paper, we discuss and analyze storytelling techniques in 3D geographic visualizations so that authors and developers working with geospatial data can use these techniques to conceptualize their visualization and interaction design. Finally, we outline two examples which apply the given concepts.

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Digitalization in schools requires a rethinking of teaching materials and methods in all subjects. This upheaval also concerns traditional print media, like school atlases used in geography classes. In this work, we examine the cartographic technological feasibility of extending a printed school atlas with digital content by augmented reality (AR). While previous research rather focused on topographic three-dimensional (3D) maps, our prototypical application for Android tablets complements map sheets of the Swiss World Atlas with thematically related data. We follow a natural marker approach using the AR engine Vuforia and the game engine Unity. We compare two workflows to insert geo-data, being correctly aligned with the map images, into the game engine. Next, the imported data are transformed into partly animated 3D visualizations, such as a dot distribution map, curved lines, pie chart billboards, stacked cuboids, extruded bars, and polygons. Additionally, we implemented legends, elements for temporal and thematic navigation, a screen capture function, and a touch-based feature query for the user interface. We evaluated our prototype in a usability experiment, which showed that secondary school students are as effective, interested, and sustainable with printed as with augmented maps when solving geographic tasks.

This study compares participants’ performance in extracting information from three-dimensional pie charts with individually extruded sectors in a single map frame against two-dimensional pie and bar charts in adjacent map frames. Specifically, we examine the response accuracy and response times of 181 adults who were asked to (1) identify the highest magnitude, (2) estimate a proportion, (3) perform both at the same time, and (4) solve a map-related task using the two chart setups. For each task, charts were shown on backgrounds with increasing visual complexity: a blank, a borders-only, and a choropleth map. Furthermore, we tested whether participants’ performance improved through additional practice with the two chart types. We did not observe any differences in participants’ aggregated response accuracy or response times between the tested three-dimensional and two-dimensional chart types for the (1) highest magnitude task and (2) proportion task. However, participants solved the (3) combination task with two-dimensional pie and bar charts on a blank background more accurately and were faster in fulfilling the (4) spatial task with three-dimensional pie charts. The first difference, however, leveled for participants who gained more practice and who accomplished the combination task on maps with higher visual complexity, whereas the second difference persisted even for more trained subjects.