Usability evaluation of centered time cartograms

Abstract

Abstract:A time cartogram visualizes travelling-times between locations. It replaces the geographic distance by time distance and distorts the underlying map accordingly. By distorting the map, time cartograms may give a more intuitive and clear picture of travelling-times. The distortion of the map, however, can make time cartograms harder to recognize and use. Although cartograms are becoming widespread in use, very little is known about their usability. This study focuses on the usability of centered time cartograms: time cartograms that visualize travellingtimes from a fixed starting location to other destinations in a region. We created several centered time cartograms to answer spatio-temporal questions related to the Dutch railway network. Two experiments were performed: a laboratory test and an online survey. In the laboratory test, we used eye-tracking, thinking aloud, and video-recording to compare four different designs of centered time cartograms to find out which one (or combination) of these performs better in answering spatiotemporal questions and thus, to establish a favorable design strategy for these cartograms. In the online survey, centered time cartograms were evaluated against a geographic and schematic map for accuracy, response time, and preference. The first experiment suggested that among various designs, the centered time cartogram with emphasized railroads is the most preferred design and the centered time cartogram without railroads is the least preferred. The second experiment indicated that overall, centered time cartograms perform better than the two other solutions in performing spatio-temporal tasks, particularly when the task has a dominant time-related component.

Aggregated Gaze Data Visualization Using Contiguous Irregular Cartograms

“…Cartograms constitute thematic map visualizations that are mainly used in order to represent phenomena distributed in space (e.g., population mapping). In recent years, this type of visualization has become popular, having several applications in different domains [35], and especially fields related to cartography [36,37] and spatial analysis [38], providing fruitful information related to socio-economic conditions (see, e.g., the work presented in [39]). The implementation of a cartogram is based on the proportional distortion of a feature distance or area according to the value of the data that have to be visualized [40].…”

Visualization and Analysis of Transport Accessibility Changes Based on Time Cartograms

“…This concentric isochrons are also known as centered travel-time cartograms. Another category depicts the travel time between all the pairs of locations, which is called noncentered travel-time cartogram [17][18][19][20][21][22]. A cartogram is a novel method to represent the geographical distribution of statistical datasets, which uses certain mathematical principles to transform a map so that the areas or distances on the map are proportional to the attribute values [23][24][25].…”

An end-user evaluation to analyze the effectiveness of cartograms for mapping relative non-motorized accessibility

“…The authors found that thematic maps were rated as more suitable than cartograms to map quantitative data. Another example is the work by Ullah et al. (2016), which involved carrying out a laboratory test with the general public.…”