Square-glyphs. Assessing the readability of multidimensional spatial data visualized as square-glyphs
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Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2023
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Type
01A - Journal article
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Parent work
International Journal of Cartography
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DOI of the original publication
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Volume
9
Issue / Number
3
Pages / Duration
449-465
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Publisher / Publishing institution
Taylor & Francis
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Abstract
Glyphs have long been used to approach the challenge of visualising multidimensional data with geospatial reference. Depending on the glyph design, data-dense visualizations of several concurrent data dimensions can be created. The square-glyph is a compound glyph to represent up to four data dimensions, e.g. walkability indices, with reference to a gridded geographic space (Bleisch and Hollenstein 2018 [Exploring multivariate representations of indices along linear geographic features. Proceedings of the 2017 International Cartographic Conference, Washington D.C. (pp. 1–5)]). In this paper, we present a user study to evaluate the readability and interpretability of the square-glyphs. We compare user performance with square-glyph plots containing two and four simultaneously mapped data dimensions under different value compositions. Our results show that the user performance with square-glyphs does not decrease as the number of data dimensions represented increases from two to four. The study results indicate no significant differences in efficiency and effectiveness between the four-dimensional square-glyphs and the two-dimensional square-glyphs. The average values of five adjacent glyphs can be estimated with a mean error of eight percentage points. The results suggest that equal value distances between the displayed dimensions are more accurately perceived in a lower-value composition than in higher-value arrangements.
Keywords
Glyph visualization, Square-glyphs, Multidimensionalspatial data, Evaluation, Userstudy
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ISBN
ISSN
2372-9333
2372-9341
2372-9341
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
Yes
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
Hybrid
License
Citation
Müller, G., Hollenstein, D., Cöltekin, A., & Bleisch, S. (2023). Square-glyphs. Assessing the readability of multidimensional spatial data visualized as square-glyphs. International Journal of Cartography, 9(3), 449–465. https://doi.org/10.1080/23729333.2023.2235492