Amount of Information in Mobile Maps: A Study of User Preference

• As mobile map services are becoming increasingly popular, it is important to use a cartography that can provide good readability in reduced formats. The amount of information presented in a map is important for understandability and is thus an essential aspect of map usability. In addition, the limited memory capacities of many mobile devices make it necessary that only the most important information should be included. To gain a clearer picture of cartographic usability for small screen maps, a study of amount of information in mobile map services’ maps was performed. Fourteen different maps, with buildings generalized to different extents, were presented to users who graded these in order of preferred level of information. The study focused on amount of information as a quantitative measure of the syntactic contents of a map. Two major conclusions could be drawn: there was no relationship between scale and preferred generalization level, and the test persons preferred maps where all buildings were represented.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Naturgeografi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Physical Geography (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

art (subject category)

ref (subject category)