Design and evaluation of an adaptive mobile map-based visualisation system

Abstract

Mobile visualisation of map-based information is a difficult task. Designers of such systems must contend with the limitations of mobile devices in terms of hardware, screen size and input mechanisms. These problems are exacerbated by the nature of spatial data, where a large information space needs to be presented and manipulated on a small screen. In this paper, a prototype adaptive mobile map-based visualisation system, called MediaMaps, is presented. MediaMaps allows users to capture, location-tag, sort and browse multimedia in a map-based view. MediaMaps was designed to adapt the information visualised, the map-based visualisations and the supporting user interface. The results of an international field study, in which participants used MediaMaps on their personal mobile phones for a three-week period, are also presented. These results show that the adaptations implemented achieved high levels of accuracy and user satisfaction and successfully addressed some of the limitations of mobile map-based visualisation. © 2009 Springer.