Understanding geospatial interests by visualizing map interaction behavior

Abstract

Much information can be derived about users’ geospatial information requirements based on how they interact with a geospatial system. Our research focuses on the analysis of mouse movements and map navigation operations as a proxy to implicitly determine users’ interests. Visualization provides an effective way of investigating how these interactions can provide an insight into users’ preferences and task at hand. This article describes GIViz (Geospatial Interactions Visualizer), a visualization tool that enables system designers to analyze user interface behavior with a geospatial data set. Behavior traits identified can be exploited to improve map personalization engines. In particular, this article discusses the visualization of user interface behavior to gain a better understanding of the correlation between users’ actions, the interaction strategy employed for approaching a particular type of task and users’ interests.