Hi Andrew,
If you design a very nice map, with pertinent symbology, color
scheme, etc, you might be upset if your rendering software make it ugly
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Also accessibility needs to be
considered. There's no point in creating a beautiful colourful map of
greens and blues if your colour blind reader can't discern the two
colours. Or, for instance, if it photocopies badly. Here in the UK we
had a range of 1:25k paper maps aimed at walkers, cyclists, outdoor
types which were 'rendered' (this was pre-digital, but quite recent)
in black, white, grey and green and they worked perfectly. They were
subsequently replaced by full colour maps which make, to many people's
eyes, the maps more fussy and harder to 'use'.
I do believe that usability principles should be applied to map design
(it's usually the case but not always) and I also prefer simple design
over fancier ones. So, I agree with you on most points. But all this is
still about map design, therefore out of scope regarding my study.
Taken your good old paper maps example, you may notice a quality
difference if you print the map with an inkjet printer, a laser printer
or a huge professional printing device. This is precisely the device
drawing capacity that I'm trying to assess. I would like to understand
how this quality is perceived by a map user. I try to identify a set of
some simple criteria that could be used by any non-cartographer people
to evaluate the drawing quality.
Good rendering is that which fits the job at hand. I'd say that as
such it is context dependent and almost entirely qualitative (once
you've got the basics correct - features in the right places etc) and
doesn't really lend itself to quantitative analysis. I'd love to hear
your views though,
You point right at the problem. Indeed, rendering quality is just about
user perception, hence subjective. But subjectivity does not impede
quantitative analysis, it just requires a qualitative enquiry
beforehand. This first step hopefully identify criteria that can be
quantified in a second step. Ok, this is the theory taught in marketing
classes, the problem is that I don't have time nor fundings for a real
qualitative analysis. A debate on rendering quality would hopefully lead
me to interesting ideas which could quatified.
Cheers,
Andrew
Cheers,
Gilles
---
Andrew Larcombe
Freelance Geospatial, Database & Web Programming
web: http://www.andrewlarcombe.co.uk
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
icq: 306690163
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Gilles Bassiere
MAKINA CORPUS
30 rue des Jeuneurs
FR-75011 PARIS
http://www.makina-corpus.com
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