Search

Digital maps, serving as pivotal instruments in the realm of geographic information services, adeptly encapsulate spatial data through refined graphics and symbols. Widely used across various domains such as smart devices, in-vehicle navigation systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), electronic gaming, and virtual reality, these maps face the ongoing challenge of delivering real-time, precise, and efficacious map rendering and interaction experiences. In response to this challenge, this study introduces a Stylized Hierarchical Symbol structure (SHS) and a Geographic Feature Color-weighted Rendering technique (GFCR). The approach is further complemented by incorporating Adaptive Hierarchy-Weighted caching (AHie), Catalan Number-based Caching access (CatNCa), and Grid-based Dynamic caching loading (GriD). Experimental results demonstrate the method's effectiveness in addressing issues related to timeliness, accuracy, and logical correctness in mobile map environments, enhancing the real-time interaction experience of mobile digital maps. Notably, this method imposes modest hardware and storage requirements, making it applicable to a wide range of scenarios including natural resource planning, intricate road landscapes, route navigation challenges, and emerging fields such as autonomous driving, virtual reality, and the metaverse.

How will we interact with maps in the future? We can take for granted that technical evolution will bring changes to human computer interaction (HCI). Advances in eye-tracking hardware have made eye-trackers smaller, affordable and more accurate, thereby enlarging the potential of gaze-based map interaction (Liao et al., 2022). Furthermore, eye-tracking is becoming possible with common webcams. Webcam-based eye tracking can be viable and low-cost alternative to specialised infrared eye tracking hardware (Wisiecka et al., 2022). Whatever technical advancements will bring, one thing will remain - we will always be reading maps with our eyes. As we scan maps with our eyes to collect cartographic information and detect map tools, it seems natural to use an eye-controlled interface for map interaction. This work evaluates performances as well as user experiences of gaze-based map interaction. Two sets of completely gaze-controlled as well as gaze-assisted interfaces have been implemented. Three gaze-based map interfaces were implemented to a standard desktop computer with an eye-tracker. These consist of a purely eye-controlled navigation, a gaze-based interface with keyboard assistance, as well as a conventional keyboard and mouse interface for comparison (Serrao, 2020). A further three gaze-based map interfaces were implemented into Mixed Reality (MR) using see-through head-mounted MR glasses. For the MR environment the set of interfaces had to be adapted to conventional hand gestures and gaze-based interfaces. The MR interfaces are set up as purely gaze control, a combination of gaze and voice control and one interface controlled by hand gestures (Kurumbayeva, 2021). The gaze-based map interactions have been evaluated by user testing. 16 participants took part in the desktop computer experiments. 22 participants took part in the MR experiments. The users performed map controlling interactions, such as panning, zooming and rotating, as well as information retrieving actions. Each user had to complete a set of navigating tasks on the desktop computer for each of the three interfaces. Table 1 shows that the mean completion times were lowest using conventional mouse and keyboard interface. The map interface taking the user´s gaze to direct interaction triggered by keyboard buttons was 2nd lowest at around 30% longer completion time. This was rather promising considering it was a new way of HCI for all test persons. However, the purely eyecontrolled navigation shows the longest mean completion times with some very high single user completion times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pedestrian navigation assistance is often utilized in familiar as well as in unfamiliar environments. In recent years, several novel approaches have been introduced relying on map-based, vibrotactile or gaze-based interaction. We introduce a novel interaction concept named ‘VibroGaze’ that combines the benefits of vibrotactile and gaze-based interaction for pedestrian navigation. Furthermore, we present the results of a between subjects experiment with 40 participants for the evaluation of four of the most novel pedestrian navigation approaches in an indoor (multi-level building) as well as an outdoor setting. The results showed that our proposed navigation concept can effectively assist the users during navigation. Moreover, the findings revealed differences between the two tested environments and suggest that the typical map-based approach is still the most efficient navigation aid for indoor environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Households' willingness to pay (WTP) for water quality improvements-representing their economic value-depends on where improvements occur. Households often hold higher values for improvements close to their homes or iconic areas. Are there other areas where improvements might hold high value to individual households, do effects on WTP vary by type of improvement, and can these areas be identified even if they are not anticipated by researchers? To answer these questions, we integrated a water quality model and map-based, interactive choice experiment to estimate households' WTP for water quality improvements throughout a river network covering six New England states. The choice experiment was implemented using a push-to-web survey over a sample of New England households. Voting scenarios used to elicit WTP included interactive geographic information system (GIS) maps that illustrated three water quality measures at various zoom levels across the study domain. We captured data on how respondents maneuvered through these maps prior to answering the value-eliciting questions. Results show that WTP was influenced by regionwide quality improvements and improvements surrounding each respondent's home, as anticipated, but also by improvements in individualized locations identifiable via each respondent's map interactions. These spatial WTP variations only appear for low-quality rivers and are focused around particular areas of New England. The study shows that dynamic map interactions can convey salient information for WTP estimation and that predicting spatial WTP heterogeneity based primarily on home or iconic locations, as typically done, may overlook areas where water quality has high value.

Location awareness can help facilitate a rendezvous of two or more persons. To further enhance the rendezvous experience, we conducted two complementary field studies to identify what information in a location-aware map application is important to rendezvous individuals (study 1) and to explore the use of autofocus, our automation technique to reduce user interactions with the rendezvous application while still providing relevant information to assist users with their navigation task (study 2). Overall, our results highlight the importance of maintaining the visibility of the user’s location in relation to that of their partner(s) and rendezvous location. Additionally, we show that automation is useful in the context of a rendezvous application, but that the considerations are significantly more nuanced than originally conceived. We discuss unique instances when and why the automation process broke-down or did not perform as required by users. The results of this work demonstrate the potential for automation in a location-aware rendezvous application and identify important design considerations for future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These are exciting days for cartography, as emerging technologies have greatly expanded the possibilities of online, interactive maps. These developments, however, now require cartographers to think about issues that only a few years ago fell solely in the domains of human-computer interaction (HCI) and web design. Further, given how fast these changes have occurred, there are few tried-and-true guidelines for building digital maps. This paper reports on the design, development, and evaluation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map (www.lakeshorepreserve.wisc.edu) and outlines many of the insights gleaned from this process. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the important bridge between cartography and usability evaluation (i.e., how we study the way in which users interact with their maps and how we measure the success of those interactions) so that the efforts of a team of developers and stakeholders can be coordinated in a way that ensures the map works equally well for all potential end users. We outline the relative merits of two broad categories of evaluation techniques, arguing that there is no single, correct evaluation technique appropriate for all evaluation scenarios, and then detail the specific strategy adopted for evaluation of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map. We conclude by offering four design guidelines for online, interactive maps revealed during the evaluation of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Interactive Map: two positive strategies we recommend for consideration when designing map interfaces (inclusion of cascading interface complexity and provision of map browsing flexibility) and two pitfalls we caution to avoid (minimalist design of interface widgets and employment of a lorem ipsum map during development). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the finding of the involvement of the C-terminal moieties of tubulin subunits in the interaction of MAPs, different studies have focused on the substructure of the binding domains for the different MAPs. Current biochemical evidence point to the role of a low-homology sequence between α and β-subunits within the conserved region of the C-terminal domain of tubulin, in the binding of AMP-2 and tau. Another line of studies indicates that a site for interaction of the high molecular weight MAPs is located in the variable region defined by the glutamic-rich C-terminus of β-tubulin. Here, we report the usefulness of idiotypic site-directed antibodies, produced by immunization with peptides from different β-tubulin isoforms, to study both MAP-1 and MAP-2 binding sites on tubulin. On the basis of these results with site-specific antibodies along with previous structural information (Cross et al. 1991, Biochemistry 30: 4362-4366), we propose the role of consensus sequences, from the invariant β-tubulin C-terminal domain in the binding of MAP-2 and from the variable domain in the interactions of MAP-1 and MAP-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]