A web-based visualisation tool for analysing mouse movements to support map personalisation

Abstract

Information overload is a well known issue across many domains. Due to an increase in the quantity of information associated with geographic data, information overload is now also prevalent in the spatial domain. This makes interacting with maps tedious and difficult, as extracting relevant information becomes laborious. Map personalisation offers a solution to this problem. By implicitly monitoring user behaviour and interaction with maps, common patterns, preferences and interests can be identified. Using this approach, personalised maps can be generated which match user preferences and contribute to resolving information overload in the spatial domain. Traditionally data mining techniques are used to identify preferences however, visual analytics has proven useful in detecting interests and patterns not apparent via data mining. This paper presents a visual analysis tool called VizAnalysisTools, which can be used by developers and analysts to detect patterns in Web map usage among groups of users. The knowledge gained through this visual analysis can be used to strengthen map personalisation techniques.