A User Study of a Map-Based Slideshow Editor

Our research goal is to facilitate the sharing of stories with digital maps. Today, many kinds of “my map” applications allow users to create maps that display personal collections of places visited, along with photographs, videos, and texts. The authors of such maps can organize and publish their collections of places by creating maps, and viewers can browse these collections freely by panning and zooming the maps or searching by location. It is difficult, however, for authors to represent their experiences as a sequence of events, mainly because it is up to the viewer to decide which map locations will be viewed, and in what order. Therefore, one future requirement for this type of map application is to facilitate map-based storytelling. The objective of this study is to identify and discuss the characteristics of map-based stories and the effectiveness of maps in editing them. To help users communicate map-based stories in a more narrative fashion, we have developed software for mapping photo collections and creating slideshows to present travelogues, sightseeing guides, and so on, which we call a map-based slideshow. In this article, we analyse user-created, map-based slideshows, focusing on the spatiotemporal relationships among the photographs that compose the slideshow. We also describe a user study focusing on how and in which order users edit map-based slideshows. The results show characteristics of the spatiotemporal structures of map-based stories. We also evaluated the effectiveness of maps in the user's story-editing process. Because the spatial slideshow is a typical form of map-based story, we assume that most of the knowledge acquired is applicable not only to map-based slideshows but also to other map-based stories, such as a “tour” of Google Earth

Information retrieval · Narrative · Panning (audio · Process (computing · Storytelling · World Wide Web · Zoom · Computer Science · Digital Storytelling and Education · Geographic Information Systems Studies