Hot answers tagged maps
72
People who turn on the TV on election night expect to see the map of their country and see which states voted which way. Those who actually follow the elections and have at least some very basic knowledge of what's going on, also know which are the important states to watch, and they can find them easily on the geographic map. Even those who aren't that ...
28
Interesting graphic - the US looks quite funny. But I think a geographic representation is still best way because of:
The viewer is interested in what state has elected and which party. This is best shown in a geographical correct map as you are used to know where a state is situated.
It is obvious, that the USA is shown. No need for explaining a strange ...
22
The point is that the map is intended as an at-a-glance throwaway space filler that does it's job simply and efficiently and for all viewers.
Of course, that's not to say there's no place for maps with more information, but there's no point in doing that unless you can provide a way for the user to interact with the map in a meaningful manner that allows ...
5
The best map I have seen is by Chris Howard. It combines population density and partisan lean using color:
4
You have to chose between two User Experience options: speed vs. feature. As it happens I'm in the current situation as well at work. We have a landing page with a lot of features, making it extremely heavy to load, and in production the infrastructure could be better.
So what do we do? Use cache as far as we can take it, reducing loading time - because the ...
3
Instead of a circle, how about highlighting the neighbourhood or the post office for a given zip code area. Another alternative (depending on the context), the (main) train station for the area.
Clustered items can be presented by a “mulitple items version” of the default marker icon and all sub-elements listed in a bubble or somewhere outside the map.
3
There is a half way house between the plain geographic map that lead's republicans to think they won (or should have won) because more of the map is red and the continuous cartogram featured in the question. This is the discontinuous cartogram where the sizes of the states is modified to represent the population (or number of electoral college votes, etc).
...
3
For a number of reasons outlined by Brad Frost here I would vote for 'static, and clickable' to launch the default map app on the mobile device.
Edit to provide more detail:
Brad Frost proposes conditional loading to serve up the best map in the right context. Embed the map if the screensize is appropriate, otherwise serve up a static image which links to ...
2
Don't forget to take the location and audience into consideration.
Is the location reached from two or more popular starting points? Does your audience regularly use native map applications on their mobile device?
Precede the map with some simplified, locally relevant directions.
From the I-10 Freeway South
Take Shea Blvd. Exit
Right on ...
2
Drag-n-drop is traditionally done with left-click.
However, for you, mousedown, move, mouseup is for dragging (these are the elementary events)
Usually, click is to select a place. On Google Maps, if you click on a label, an icon or a result balloon, it select its corresponding place. On Nokia Maps, if you click on an icon or a result balloon, it selects ...
1
When the people who use the site hit the home page what do they want to do?
Answering that question will help provide the answer to your question.
For example - assuming we're talking a web app here - maybe on a smartphone I don't want to see a map. Maybe I want a list of the three closes parking locations and clicking on one of those will open the native ...
1
I think it is common practice to represent a non-exact location using a circle with a radius that indicates the level of certainty you have about its location. Without making this circle seem intrusive, it can be a very light shade or an outline with a central label not unlike a map marker for an exact location (but with a different styling).
Once you have ...
1
As an alternative to clicking a map, I'd suggest that instead of a list of neighbourhoods you use a autocomplete input field.
This eliminates the problems of potentially overly long lists. Additionally, you can add really many area names, even overlapping. I.e. if someone lives in a place which could be both listed in neighbourhood a, b as well as district ...
1
In data visualization terms, you've described dynamic queries or dynamic brushing on a chloropleth map. Selection of regions on the map is supported through either a second view of the data, e.g., a table containing all countries on the map, or a set of controls. See this paper for a history of one of the more well-known examples of this UI - although this ...
1
I found a site that has a set of examples for interactive maps with region selection.
The examples are in flash, which is not ultimate, but to utilize as a selection of concepts to find a suitable interactive patterns they work great.
Disclaimer: some are very wonky and have a very unsatisfying look n' feel.
1
Nice concept. I would play with providing a color palette on the side, turning the mouse cursor into some kind of brush or color bucket (like in MS Paint) and using it to fill the countries with different colors.
You can use different tricks to make it clearer that the colors represent groups. E.g. at first you can have one color and label it "group 1", ...
1
POI Screen:
You say "Half Dome" at the top. Don't keep repeating it in your labels.
For example lets use a UX site. You wouldn't want the buttons to say:
UX Chat
UX Meta
UX About Us
UX FAQ
You can just get rid of the common word. Only use it as much as necessary. This is a usability tip I learned in Nielsen's Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed
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