Practices and Strategies in Responsive Thematic Map Design: A Report from Design Workshops with Experts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Schöttler, Sarah, Hinrichs, Uta, Bach, Benjamin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Schöttler, Sarah
Hinrichs, Uta
Bach, Benjamin
author_facet Schöttler, Sarah
Hinrichs, Uta
Bach, Benjamin
contents This paper discusses challenges and design strategies in responsive design for thematic maps in information visualization. Thematic maps pose a number of unique challenges for responsiveness, such as inflexible aspect ratios that do not easily adapt to varying screen dimensions, or densely clustered visual elements in urban areas becoming illegible at smaller scales. However, design guidance on how to best address these issues is currently lacking. We conducted design sessions with eight professional designers and developers of web-based thematic maps for information visualization. Participants were asked to redesign a given map for various screen sizes and aspect ratios and to describe their reasoning for when and how they adapted the design. We report general observations of practitioners' motivations, decision-making processes, and personal design frameworks. We then derive seven challenges commonly encountered in responsive maps, and 17 strategies to address them, such as repositioning elements, segmenting the map, or using alternative visualizations. We compile these challenges and strategies into an illustrated cheat sheet targeted at anyone designing or learning to design responsive maps. The cheat sheet is available online: https://responsive-vis.github.io/map-cheat-sheet
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_20735
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Practices and Strategies in Responsive Thematic Map Design: A Report from Design Workshops with Experts
Schöttler, Sarah
Hinrichs, Uta
Bach, Benjamin
Human-Computer Interaction
This paper discusses challenges and design strategies in responsive design for thematic maps in information visualization. Thematic maps pose a number of unique challenges for responsiveness, such as inflexible aspect ratios that do not easily adapt to varying screen dimensions, or densely clustered visual elements in urban areas becoming illegible at smaller scales. However, design guidance on how to best address these issues is currently lacking. We conducted design sessions with eight professional designers and developers of web-based thematic maps for information visualization. Participants were asked to redesign a given map for various screen sizes and aspect ratios and to describe their reasoning for when and how they adapted the design. We report general observations of practitioners' motivations, decision-making processes, and personal design frameworks. We then derive seven challenges commonly encountered in responsive maps, and 17 strategies to address them, such as repositioning elements, segmenting the map, or using alternative visualizations. We compile these challenges and strategies into an illustrated cheat sheet targeted at anyone designing or learning to design responsive maps. The cheat sheet is available online: https://responsive-vis.github.io/map-cheat-sheet
title Practices and Strategies in Responsive Thematic Map Design: A Report from Design Workshops with Experts
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20735