Location visualization in social media applications

Location sharing applications are becoming increasingly popular in social media and for use on mobile devices, yet little research has focused on their user interface design. In this paper we describe our method of charting and creating comparable designs, and present a survey-based study of 106 social media users on their preferences regarding location indicators. Our paper contributes in proposing a methodology for visual element evaluation purposes, and reveals results, e.g., that users preferred simple indicators such as points or pins for their own location, and friend location indicators to include the corresponding name.