Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

ICG Cologne 2012

INVESTIGATING COGNITIVE
ASPECTS IN DIGITAL MAPS
USING VGI TO CREATE A CHILD SUITABLE MAP

1 Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

What are the next minutes about?

 Topic of my ongoing M.Sc. Thesis
 How can we create a (digital) map, that
actually matches children´s perception of their
spatial environment
 Why should we do that?
 How could a map like this look like


Who am I?
 Philippe Rieffel, research associate at ILS
Dortmund
 B.Sc. in geography, M.Sc. (cand.) in
Geoinformatics
 Studies at Institute for
Geoinformatics, Münster
http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de


Who am I?
 Studies greatly supported by Thomas
Bartoschek (Institute for
Geoinformatics/GI@School, Münster) with
input, ideas and supervision


Why maps for children?
 Map literacy is crucial for everyday life, school,
university, work and an independent life
 Lines up with other basic skills that are
necessary
 Literacy
 Numeracy
 Use of information and communication
technologies



 Literacy Those skills are
 Numeracy taught
 Use of information
explicitly, while
and communication gaining map literacy
technologies is often implicitly
done



The high school curriculum in Germany
demands the
“[..] building of a topographic knowledge
base about a theme-based global orientation
grid as prerequisite for a differentiated
spatial integration-related thinking”.
(Core curriculum geography, high school, NRW)



 This process could
already be
stimulated
earlier, starting from
kindergarden
 Learning to Think
Spatially: GIS as a
Support System in
the K-12 Curriculum


Theoretical foundation - Piaget

 According to Piaget, infants and children form
schemas to impose order on the world
 Those schemas undergo constant variation
and modification, depending on the age
 Piaget: Assimilation and adaption
 Foundation for constructivist learning


Theoretical foundation - Piaget

 Piaget: Advancement through the stages is
biologically driven (aging)
 Newer studies show that maturing is the
basis, but the speed and quality of the
advancement are influenced by external
stimuli and experience (e.g. by
Newcombe, adaptive combination)


Theoretical foundation - Newcombe

 Those stimuli can be provided from
kindergarden on
 Technological advancement allows easy to
use and specially tailored methods towards
spatial thinking


The actual topic of this talk

 (Digital) Maps are important for the process of
spatial learning of kids, starting at very young
ages
 We worked with several software products
lately, even created some, that support spatial
learning processes


Why is that
Motivation street yellow on
this map? I see
that is grey


Research questions

 Theoretical analysis
 How do kids perceive their environment?

 How is that perception „stored“ in their imagination?

 How can that perception be transferred into a
cartographic representation?


Kids need „easier“ maps!

..that reflect their world!


First thoughts

symbology

Contents

complexity


Survey - Map orientation
Can you identify
the area of your
school and of
your home?

Please rate the
maps!
general/orientati
on

Survey - Symbology I

Symbols are taken from the OpenStreetMap renderer Mapnik:
https://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/rendering/mapnik/symbols

Survey - Symbology II


Map ranking:
Survey results

 Majority (60%) had
at least some
experience with
paper maps
 Experience with
digital map was
generally little


Survey results
 Orientation along districts
 District names prominent on
selfmade maps and Google
 No district names on the
OSM excerpt
 No.1 Map had a lot of
details removed  clarity
 No. 3 Map, too much
removed?


Survey results - Symbology

 Most icons were  Yellow for roads
identified (“Google design”)
“correctly”, some only mentioned twice
deviations  Roads either black
 Parking or grey
 Cinema  Red for borders
 Police
 Mail
 See-saw


Sketch Maps

 Sketch maps from Germany, Africa and Brazil
 School grounds
 Ability to draw sketch maps increases
drastically with aging (6-8y. poor/average; 9+
average/good)


Interpretation of sketch maps

 Leisure areas and facilities are drawn more
detailed
 Structures along daily routine ways are more
detailed
 Connections between different locations (in
position and size/relationship) by importance


Implementation

 Create a digital map service
 Render raster maps from OpenStreetMap Vector
data
 Flexible design scheme, open license
 Whole world data coverage
 Render maps / map tiles with maperitive (software)


Map design principles

 Generalize the world as little as possible / as
much as necessary
 Use symbology that is easily connectable to
the real world
 Identify important content for children, omit
unnecessary information that obstruct the map
 Use this important content as orientation
marks


Map design principles

 Use psychological findings
 Re-use design principles from existing maps in
schoolbooks e.g.
 Focus on large scale maps
 …and now some examples!


..still to do

 Refine/improve the map design, especially for
small scale maps
 Validate the new design scheme
 Deploy on a production system


Contact

Philippe Rieffel
Philippe.rieffel@ils-forschung.de
www.ils-forschung.de
Institut für Landes und
Stadtentwicklungsforschung gGmbH
Brüderweg 22–24
D-44135 Dortmund


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