Web Map Site Evaluation
by
Hope Kawabata
Introduction
This is a class assignment to evaluate maps on the web site for Dr. Peterson's Advanced Cartographic Methods. The purpose of this assignment is to address the effectiveness of maps on the net, issues of map quality and interaction. For this assignment, we are supposed to find animated, interactive, and static maps.
This is a fly-through animation file (1.3 MB) of Death Valley made by the Department of Geological Science, San Diego State University. This Quick Time movie shows the eastern Sierra Nevada region in California and the southern part of Nevada. For more information, go to Brief explanation of the geology of Death Valley, California page.
Regarding the human computer interface of this site, degree of interaction is very limited. That is because this is an animated map created by VCR type divices to view the overall shape of the valley. In that way, interaction of this map is just clicking the window to start the animation, sometimes to stop to take a look at the site, or rewinding to view the scence differently. Therefore, there is any options nor interface elements.
Layout and design of this map are well planned. Angles of flying-through is dinamic, it makes you as if you are flying through Death Valley. The speed of move is kind of too fast. On this site, there is no scale nor legend. And that is fine because the purpose of this map is not to show the detail or direction, but the overall shape of the valley. Colors used in this site are good. Shadows of clouds make the site real. Although the resolution in normal size of this site is not really clear enough, one can solve it by reducing the size into half.
Overall display of this site is effective and the display achieves its objective by exploring widely through Death Valley.
Here are some other animated maps I found.
1.Movies of Globe
(Open Local File)
2.Yellowstone National Park Flythrough
(Open Local File)
3.Urban Flythrough (Less Rendered)
(Open Local File)
The GLOBE Visualization is one of the hyper-linked pages made in Poland that offers images of worldwide environmental data such as temperature (daily, maximum, minimum, and current), cloud cover, precipitiation, water temperature, water pH, soil moisture, evaporation, albedo, land cover, species identification, biometrics, and vegetation index. Some pages are created by students, and otehrs are reference data from the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), or satellites in Earth. This server is brought to us by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
From the human computer interface view, this page has abandant degree of interactions by using hyper-link elements. In the page called The Great Globe Gallery, there are 18 map projections to scroll down and also other links. These interactions are apporopriate for the purpose of maps showen here (environmental data). These worldwide data are implemented well enough however, legends can be more sophisticated with their shapes and colors.
Graphic Attributes of maps here are fine. Colors on this home page has a strong contrust with a rainbow background. As the title of the page shows, there are three different globes here. However, I do not understand why it has to be three, because whatever I click on, it brings me to the same page. Also, designwise, having one globe might be better. Every map likned to this page does not have a scale and north arrow. We tend to expect to have them, but I do not think it is always necessary. Especially, when it comes to showing the whole world, we know which direction is north and also the relatioshiop of the world shape. In that way, we do not need to have a specific scale or north arrow to take a look at the world map, especially, a globe. As a result, maps here are not in detail, but more graphic. Legibility of text is fine. Also, maps have a good size, not to have to scroll down. Map projections used here are as follows: Cartesian, Equal Area, and Spherical. Further infomation are avairable at Projection.
The reasons why I chose this map for this evaluation are its color contrust and resolution (this is a jpg file). This map is made by the university of Texas at Austin . They made more maps of Africa for the different purposes (different part of Africa and more in detail).
This is a static map, having no zoom function, anything like that, therefore, human computer interface is very limited. Size of this map is too big to view, so that the screen needs to be scrolled horizontally and vertically to get the entire view. In this way, interaction of this maps is inconvenient.
Graphically, I really like this map because of its color usage. It is so colorful, but colors do not stand out at all. It is good to use saturated colors for each polygon and shade insides with less saturated ones. Text on this map is legible which shows the name of the countries, their capitals, and a few main cities. Title of this map is not accurate because this map shows not only the continent of Africa, but also Middle East area, too. If this maps covers only the African continent as the title says, the size can be reduced and also layout of this map will be much effective. This map is an Azimuthal Equal-Area projection, and has a scale on it saying boundary representation is not nesessarilly authoritative.
If the size of the file is smaller, and fit in the window, overall display will be much better.
Here is a static map of #3 animated map.
(Open Local File)
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