Joe Cartographer can make a map that allows users to jump to a latitude and longitude, but he doesn't have the resources to make an über-map like Google's.Ĭontext: It's a wonderful way to use maps, but this really is the root of the problem we think might exist with losing context. Type, click (or enter), and you're there.Ĭons: To be most useful, the system and the data behind it have to be very flexible. Pros: Oh so efficient if you know what you want to find. This, by the way, is what Harrower and Sheesley call 'precise' navigation-knowing where you want to go and going directly there-as opposed to 'fuzzy' navigation-browsing the map to find what you're looking for. You search for where you want to go (an address, a business, or whatever), and the map goes there. This is basically what the major online mapping services do. I was not about to make my own demo of the ninth method, specifying explicit coordinates or scale. (For simplicity I’ve left zooming out of most of those demos where it would be accomplished via separate interface widgets.)

With respect to my previous post, it is a lack of what they call “local-global orientation cues” that can lead to the “navigational trauma” of losing context.īelow are small demos of eight of the nine methods listed by Harrower and Sheesley, along with their thoughts and mine on functionality and efficiency as well as a word or two on the prior subject of maintaining context. Following last week’s post on losing context with interactive maps, I wanted to consider the different methods of navigating an interactive map (i.e., panning and zooming) and how they might affect that issue, and while I’m at it look at other aspects of these methods, too.Ī great place to start is the 2005 paper by my now co-mappers Mark Harrower and Ben Sheelsey called Designing Better Map Interfaces: A Framework for Panning and Zooming.* (A PDF is available on Professor Harrower’s web site.) In that paper they discuss criteria for evaluating panning and zooming methods, namely functionality and efficiency, and then go on to present and evaluate nine common methods of panning and zooming.

Panning google earthview