Audio Enhanced Map Animation – Testing Perception of Spatial and Temporal Relations
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Hall, A.; 2Multimäki, S.; 3Ahonen-rainio, P.
1AALTO UNIVERSITY Email: andreas.hall@aalto.fi
2AALTO UNIVERSITY Email: salla.multimaki@aalto.fi
3AALTO UNIVERSITY Email: paula.ahonen@aalto.fi
Abstract
Map animation is a popular way to represent time in geovisualization but studies of the effectiveness of map animations have produced mixed results. One potential way to improve map animations that has been discussed frequently but only sparsely studied in the literature is to add sound and make them multimodal. Therefore, this paper investigates whether sound can be used to enhance the usability of an animated map in an exploratory analysis context. Here, we focus on the perception of spatial and temporal relations between events. An internet-based user test was performed. The results show that adding sound does not impair the usability of map animations but fail to show that it improves it. The conclusion is that, rather than rejecting the hypothesis that sound can be used to improve map animations, the study was not appropriately designed to measure what it set out to measure. However, it produced some interesting results indicating that the benefit of sound in animated maps might be related to the number of events in the animation and be different when it comes to reasoning about temporal and spatial relations. This study works as a good starting point for future research.