Intuitiveness of geospatial uncertainty visualizations: A user study on point symbols

Abstract

The understanding of uncertainty, or the difference between a real geographic phenomenon and the user’s understanding of that phenomenon, is essential for those who work with spatial data. From this perspective, map symbols can be used as a tool for providing information about the level of uncertainty. Nevertheless, communicating uncertainty to the user in this way can be a challenging task. The main aim of the paper is to propose intuitive symbols to represent uncertainty. This goal is achieved by user testing of specially compiled point symbol sets. Emphasis is given to the intuitiveness and easy interpretation of proposed symbols. Symbols are part of a user-centered eye-tracking experiment designed to evaluate the suitability of the proposed solutions. Eye-tracking data is analyzed to determine the subject’s performance in reading the map symbols. The analyses include the evaluation of observed parameters, user preferences, and cognitive metrics. Based on these, the most appropriate methods for designing point symbols are recommended and discussed.