Cartographic Interaction Primitives: Framework and Synthesis

Abstract

A cartographic interaction primitive is a basic unit of interactivity that is combined with other primitives in sequence when using interactive maps. The construction of a taxonomy of these basic interaction primitives is considered the 'grand challenge of interaction', as such taxonomies provide a consistent lexicon for describing map-based interaction strategies and interface designs, inform the design of scientific experiments to investigate the nature of cartographic interaction, and ultimately lead to design and use guidelines for interactive maps. The purpose of this research is not to offer a new framework of interaction primitives-as there are many in existence-but to organize and synthesize extant strategies for parsing interaction within Cartography and the related fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Information Visualisation, and Visual Analytics into a logical framework. Norman's stages of action model provides a useful foundation for conceptualizing interaction primitives, with organisation of extant taxonomies by the model resulting in three dominant approaches for parsing interaction: (1) an objective-based approach, compartmentalizing cartographic interaction according to the kinds of tasks the user may wish to complete with a cartographic interface; (2) an operator-based approach, compartmentalizing cartographic interaction according to the unique cartographic interfaces that make manipulation of a cartographic representation possible; and (3) an operand-based approach, compartmentalizing cartographic interaction according to characteristics of the digital/virtual object with which the user is interacting. Extant interaction primitive taxonomies representative of each of these three approaches are treated in turn, synthesizing key themes within each approach and identifying important concordances and discordances across the associated taxonomies.

A Multi-Level Typology of Abstract Visualization Tasks

“…We surveyed work relating to tasks and models of user behaviour, spanning the research literature in visualization, visual analytics, human-computer interaction, cartography, and information retrieval. We focus on two subsets that informed the configuration of our typology: thirty works that explicitly contribute a taxonomy, typology, characterization, framework, or model of tasks, goals, objectives, intentions, activities, or interactions [2,3,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,19,23,29,31,37,39,42,50,51,56,57,59,61,64,66,72,73,75,78,82,83], along with twenty other references that make compelling or noteworthy assertions about user behaviour [1,4,16,17,18,27,40,44,52,54,58,65,63,67,70,69,…”

Revisiting flow maps: a classification and a 3D alternative to visual clutter

“…Interaction compensates the limitation of the computer two-dimensional display and helps to discover unobvious patterns in data by altering representation type and symbolization, posing queries and transforming data. Shneiderman (1996) classified users tasks with visualization as "overview, zoom, filter, details-ondemand, relate, history and extract" which can be fully supported by interaction (Roth, 2012). Multiscale interactive flow maps provide users an overview + detail (van den Elzen & van Wijk, 2014) context, and users can explore voluminous and multidimensional databases by toggling visibility, brushing, linking and filtering (Edsall, Andrienko, Andrienko, & Buttenfield, 2008).…”

User Interface and User Experience (UI/UX) Design

“…Representation describes the graphic (or sonic, haptic, etc.) encoding of geographic information that enables the map to "stand for" geographic phenomena [28], while interaction describes the two-way, digitally-mediated dialogue between the map and its users that enables concomitant changes to the map encoding and the user's understanding of the encoding [29]. [9].…”