investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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

ICG Cologne 2012

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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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

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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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

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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Who am I? Studies greatly supported by Thomas

Bartoschek (Institute for Geoinformatics/GI@School, Münster) with input, ideas and supervision

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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

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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Why maps for children?

Literacy Numeracy Use of information

and communication technologies

Those skills are taught explicitly, while gaining map literacy is often implicitly done

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Why maps for children?

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)

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Why maps for children?

This process could already be stimulated earlier, starting from kindergarden Learning to Think

Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum

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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

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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)

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Theoretical foundation - Newcombe

Those stimuli can be provided from kindergarden on

Technological advancement allows easy to use and specially tailored methods towards spatial thinking

Philippe Rieffel - Investigating cognitive aspects in digital maps

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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

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MotivationWhy is that

street yellow on this map? I see

that is grey

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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?

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Kids need „easier“ maps!

..that reflect their world!

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First thoughts

symbology

complexity

Contents

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

Please rate the maps! general/orientation

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Survey - Symbology I

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

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Survey - Symbology II

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Survey results

Majority (60%) had at least some experience with paper maps

Experience with digital map was generally little

Map ranking:

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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?

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Survey results - Symbology

Most icons were identified “correctly”, some deviations Parking Cinema Police Mail See-saw

Yellow for roads (“Google design”) only mentioned twice

Roads either black or grey

Red for borders

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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)

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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

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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)

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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

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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!

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..still to do

Refine/improve the map design, especially for small scale maps

Validate the new design scheme Deploy on a production system

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Contact

Philippe Rieffel

Philippe.rieffel@ils-forschung.de

www.ils-forschung.de

Institut für Landes und Stadtentwicklungsforschung gGmbHBrüderweg 22–24D-44135 Dortmund