Naïve Cartography: How Intuitions about Display Configuration Can Hurt Performance

Abstract Map-making has traditionally been the domain of professional cartographers, but with the advent of interactive display systems, users now have the flexibility to create and configure their own digital maps and other visual displays. This flexibility can be beneficial only if users have good intuitions about which display configurations are effective or ineffective for different tasks. Here we examine people's intuitions about display effectiveness and whether these intuitions match the actual effectiveness of different displays. Surveys of undergraduate students and post-graduate meteorology students reveal that they consistently prefer enhanced displays, especially those that add animation and realism. These naive intuitions contrast with the principles of cartography, which emphasize the importance of abstracting from the real world to create simple displays that make task-relevant information salient. Both a review of objective studies and a new study presented here support traditional princip...

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