MAPII 2022

Map-based Interfaces and Interactions

07 June 2022 – Rome, Italy

 

Programme

This full day workshop will be interactive and informal. It will combine short presentations of accepted position papers with periods of discussions, aimed at generating ideas for future research directions. The workshop will also include a hands-on activity, during which the participants will be invited to sketch designs for a map-based interactive application in small groups. The designs will then be shared and discussed in the workshop. The main parts of the workshop are:

  • 09:00-9:30: Registration
  • 09:30: Workshop Welcome
  • 09:35: Paper Presentations I (15+15 minutes each)
    • Temporal and Spatial Elements in Interactive Epidemiological Maps
      Saturnino Luz and Masood Masoodian
    • Immersive Maps for Drone Control: A Case for Improving Multi-UAV Ground Control Station Maps with Extended Reality
      Bryson Lawton and Frank Maurer
    • Maps with Meaning
      Alan Dix
  • 11:00: Coffee Break
  • 11:30: Paper Presentations II (15+15 minutes each)
    • Mapping the Colocalisation Network: A Wayfinding Approach to Interacting with Complex Network Diagrams
      Nicola Cerioli, Rupesh Vyas, Mary Patricia Reeve and Masood Masoodian
    • A Map-based Interactive System for Visualizing Large Networks
      Kathryn Gray, Mingwei Li, Reyan Ahmed, Md. Khaledur Rahman, Ariful Azad, Stephen Kobourov and Katy Börner
    • Touchscreen Interactions for Spatial Data Visualizations on Multi-touch Spherical Displays: Interaction Design Guidelines
      Nikita Soni, Kathryn A. Stofer and Lisa Anthony
  • 13:00: Lunch Break
  • 14:30: Hands-on Activity: Sketching designs for a map-based interactive application
  • 15:30: Coffee Break
  • 16:00: Hands-on Activity: Sharing and discussion
  • 17:00: Discussion and planning for future directions and outcomes
  • 18:00: Workshop ends

Abstracts

Temporal and Spatial Elements in Interactive Epidemiological Maps
Saturnino Luz and Masood Masoodian

Maps have played an important role in epidemiology and public health since the beginnings of these disciplines. With the advent of geographical information systems and visualization techniques, interactive maps have become essential tools for the analysis of geographical patterns of disease incidence and prevalence and also for communication of public health knowledge, as dramatically illustrated by the proliferation of web-based maps and disease surveillance "dashboards" in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While such interactive maps are usually effective in supporting spatial analysis and visualization, support for analysis of temporal aspects has proved more challenging. However, combining these two aspects can be crucial in applications of interactive maps in epidemiology and public health work. We discuss these issues in the context of support for disease surveillance in remote regions, including tools for distributed data collection, simulation and analysis, and support for multidisciplinary collaboration.

Immersive Maps for Drone Control: A Case for Improving Multi-UAV Ground Control Station Maps with Extended Reality
Bryson Lawton and Frank Maurer

Ground control stations typically allow a single human to effectively control several drones simultaneously, the most advanced of which can support the deployment of many tens of independent drones to large-scale, outdoor environments. To best support this, maps are often a central component of their user interfaces in order to best visualize the 3D geospatial data of these drones and how they relate to each other and their operating environment. The capabilities of conventional ground control station software, however, are limited by their traditional 2D screen-based implementation, which negatively impacts the system's scalability, mobility, and how easily users are able to intuitively and accurately understand the three-dimensional nature of these maps and the data visualized on them. This paper presents stereoscopic extended reality technologies as a promising solution to these problems, arguing that by leveraging their strengths not only can one overcome past limitations, but achieve new capabilities simply not possible with prior ground control system methods.

Maps with Meaning
Alan Dix

Maps are not mere simulacra of the ground, but imbued with meaning. This is true at a geopolitical scale, but even more so for local community mapping. However, whilst digital mapping has made it easy to embed and customise maps in local websites or printed resources, it also runs the risk of de-humanising these resources, replacing rich meaning with unnecessary precision. This paper explores examples of how meaning can sit alongside the digital in map-based interactions. It then uses this backdrop to consider new challenges to help a living community where their physical village has been all but obliterated.

A Map-based Interactive System for Visualizing Large Networks
Nicola Cerioli, Rupesh Vyas, Mary Patricia Reeve and Masood Masoodian

Although network visualizations are becoming increasingly common, designing such visualizations can be challenging due to the number of visual elements and non-linear relations that they need to display. The main design challenge faced is finding the right trade-off between providing a sufficient level of information detail while keeping the visual complexity of the visualization as low as possible. One way of overcoming this challenge is to rely on the use of mental models that are familiar to the users of network visualizations. In this paper, we propose the use of a mental interaction model similar to that of map visualizations — generally based on geographical maps — as the basis for visual design of network diagrams. We argue that such a mental model would foster a set of network interaction tasks that can be defined broadly as wayfinding. We present the process of wayfinding from a semiotic standpoint, and match its main key points to those of interaction tasks with network diagrams. As a case study for this analysis, we also present a prototype network diagram visualization tool, called Colocalization Network Explorer, which we have developed to support the exploration of the relationships between various diseases and the portion of the human genome that is potentially involved in their onset.

A Map-based Interactive System for Visualizing Large Networks
Kathryn Gray, Mingwei Li, Reyan Ahmed, Md. Khaledur Rahman, Ariful Azad, Stephen Kobourov and Katy Börner

Human subject studies show that map-like visualizations are as good or better than standard node-link representations of networks in terms of task performance, engagement, and memorization and recall of the underlying data. With this in mind, we provide a map-based Interface for large networks where nodes are represented by regions and two regions are adjacent if the corresponding nodes are connected. We create a multi-level tree representation of the input network and use some force-directed methods to generate initial layouts. These layouts are used along with clustering techniques to generate a map that is interactive, always shows real nodes and links instead of showing any meta-nodes or edges from the clustering step, does not contain any node label overlap and link crossing to improve readability. The functional prototype for this map can be found at https://tiga1231.github.io/zmlt/demo/overview.html. We generate map visualizations for four real-world datasets: Last.FM network, Google topics network, tree of life, and math genealogy network.

Touchscreen Interactions for Spatial Data Visualizations on Multi-touch Spherical Displays: Interaction Design Guidelines
Nikita Soni, Kathryn A. Stofer and Lisa Anthony

Beyond flatscreen tabletop displays, multi-touch spherical displays are gaining increased attention, especially to present interactive geospatial data visualizations to facilitate learning in public spaces (e.g., museums). In general, designing an educational interface that is natural and easy to use for learners of diverse age groups and abilities is critical for designing pedagogically effective applications. We discuss interaction design guidelines established in our prior work on presenting geospatial data visualizations on a multi-touch spherical display for museum learning. Two studies were conducted to investigate how users of diverse age groups (i.e., children and adults) naturally interact and collaborate around spherical displays, particularly in the context of spatial data visualizations. This paper discusses a set of 9 interaction design guidelines consolidated from our prior work in one place. These guidelines can be informative in designing more intuitive and pedagogically effective spatial data visualization applications for multi-touch spherical displays in the future.