By: Harm Luisman
Abstract:
Maps have been used for ages and have become a fundamental part of our society. With the appearance of electronic maps and Geo Information Sciences (GIS) their usage has increased more and more. Governments also use maps to inform their citizens. New techniques to do this, like the usage of computer generated visualisations, are used more and more. In recognition of this the European Union funded the Participatory Spatial Planning in Europe (PSPE) project . This project promotes the usage of geo-visualisation in the participatory regional planning. The main focus of the project is on the need for realism of the visualisation and the interaction with the planning actor. Limited attention has been paid on how changes in geo-data (or land-use data) should be presented in 3D scenes. With the usage of a unique quantitative semi experimental set up this thesis study studied the best visualisation technique to compare two different situations.
The set up of the research used a large aerial photograph (6 x 8m) of Wageningen. Visitors of the public library in Wageningen had to walk over it to enter the library. The goal of the photo was to grab the attention of the visitors and attract them to a desk top quiz that was available in two futuristic cocoons. The quiz was a questionnaire in disguise to reduce the apprehension people feel for questionnaires and surveys. The quiz consisted of three games. Participants of the quiz had to find the 10 differences between two visualisations, answer a memory game and determine a sequence of static images after viewing an animation. In total three quizzes were created in which only the first game varied. The first game used three different visual techniques to present changes in a local street.
In total 522 people participated with the quiz. By comparing the number of differences they saw, the sequence in which they saw the differences and how they remember the differences, the three comparison techniques were compared. One of the techniques, which shows two images next to each other, and in which the differences are highlighted by a colour, proved to be the most steering technique: a creator of a visualisation can really steer which differences are seen by viewers with this technique. Another technique, which showed only one image, steered participants less effective. Clearly the usage of different comparison techniques affects the number and the sequence in which viewers see differences between two 3D scenes.