Rob Roth
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Maps have gone viral. They are in our cars, on our phones, and in our public spaces. Further, maps and mapping technology are used to address many of our planet’s most pressing problems. Arguably, maps have never been so important, and, importantly, the forms in which we encounter them are evolving. Maps increasingly are interactive, delivered online or through mobile applications. As a result, the cartographer increasingly must fill the dual roles of graphic designer as well as interaction designer; they must understand how to visually encode geographic information based on principles of perception, cognition, and semiotics as well as how to digitally code a useful and usable interface for manipulating the resulting maps.

In this talk, I will approach the emerging profession of UI/UX designer (User Interaction / User Experience) and its implications on cartography as both discipline and practice. Specifically, I will describe our experience creating a map-based UI/UX design course in the Department of Geography at UW-Madison. The story unfolds in three acts: (1) UI/UX theory, synthesized from the fields of human-computer interaction, information visualization, and usability engineering, and appended by my own empirical research on interactive map design; (2) UI/UX technology, focused on a critical comparison of client-side web mapping technologies to core interaction concepts, and (3) teaching UI/UX, drawn from lessons learned from the map-based UI/UX design course at UW-Madison. I will conclude with an outlook of UI/UX design in cartography, posing challenges and opportunities to stimulate discussion following the talk.