GeminiMap - Geographical Enhanced Map Interface for Navigation on the Internet

In this paper, we propose a method of enhancing digital map interface to reflect users' intentions by automatically displaying ancillary maps next to the original one. The users' intentions are extracted from the sequences of the users' map operations (zooming, centering, and panning) and determine the kinds of objectives based on the sequence patterns. We introduce an operation chunk mechanism to express the meaning of the operation sequences and a complex chunk mechanism to describe the users' intentions by combining the operation chunks. We have developed a prototype system called GeminiMap based on the method using two engaging maps on the browser and evaluated the appropriateness of the definition of the operation chunks and the complex chunks. The experimental results have shown that the chunk mechanism was defined appropriately, and that the automatically displayed ancillary map was sufficiently effective.