Rethinking the usage and experience of clustering in web mapping

Abstract

Although the notion of ‘too many markers’ have been mentioned in several research, in practice, displaying hundreds of Points of Interests (POI) on a web map in two dimensions with an acceptable usability remains a real challenge nowadays. Web practitioners often make excessive use of clustering aggregation to overcome performance bottlenecks without effectively resolving issues of perceived performance. This paper tries to bring a broad awareness by identifying a sample of experience issues which describe a general reality of clustering, and provide a pragmatic survey of potential technologies optimisations. At the end, we discuss the usage of technologies and the lack of documented client-server workflows, along with the need to enlarge our vision of the various clutter reduction methods.