Information Availability : The Influence of the User Interface on Spatial Awareness in Virtual Geovisualizations

Technologies providing three-dimensional visualization of the geographical data are widely discussed. Human perception and understanding of the information presented in virtual environments are conditioned by the way of information depiction and also by the specific options of interaction with the user interface (UI). The way how user interpret the depicted situation is crucial in terms of geographical theories (Hirmas et al., 2014; Coltekin et al., 2016) as well as in many applied areas such as crisis management (Bandrova et al., 2012) or aviation and vehicular traffic. Regarding used technologies, the 3D UIs are not equivalent in the number of provided interaction options. The specific interface setting of outputs and inputs (i.e. technology used) may hugely influence the process of interaction with such an environment. We explore the impact of specific UI setting of virtual geographical environment (VGEs) on the user’s perceptual, sensory-motor and cognitive processes (movement pattern/memory recollection). The aim of the study is to compare the behavioral activity of users interacting with the informationally equivalent virtual environments via different UI settings. We expect UI differences would affect user’s interaction patterns (sensory-motor level) as well as memory recollection (cognitive level) when working with virtual geovisualization.