Measuring Utility of Geospatial maps for Information Seeking: Findings of a Structured Literature Review and Preliminary Think-Aloud-Study.

Handling information and ever growing knowledge bases are still key tasks of the information society. Many organisations deplore that co-workers invest much time into search and handling of information. Information visualisation methods and tools can help to prepare and visually represent abstract information to amplify cognition. However, a more widespread adoption of visualisation tools for information seeking is still missing. Geovisualisation, a sub domain of information visualisation, is concerned with geospatial maps as visual representations of information. With the evolution of the WWW, geospatial maps are now easy to implement and because of a more intuitive representation easy to understand. There is a high benefit potential for organisations, due to that 80% of organisational data possess spatial characteristics and can be linked and displayed on geospatial maps. Thus, research objective is to measure utility of geospatial maps for information seeking. This paper presents a state-of-the-art in measuring information visualisation utility by means of a structured literature review. The review examines 33 empirical papers and shows an absence of theoretical models and influencing factors as a basis for in-depth utility analysis. Furthermore, the review identifies marginal analysis of geospatial maps for information seeking. In order to gain more insight into user seeking behaviour and requirements a pilot think aloud test and a survey was conducted. Thereto, 16 participants had to perform a web based real estate search. The results indicate that there is a need for geospatial map as tool for information seeking within spatial contexts. The next step for future research is to conduct laboratory experiments based on these findings to analyse utility. Implications of this research are to make evident statements for using geospatial maps for information seeking and to validate the used theoretical model for utility measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]