Cartographer's Toolkit

(This series is inspired by an article that I read that ranted about those who consider design at the end of a project instead of at the beginning. This article, however, did not offer any solutions as to how to go about it. I provide some of those solutions here. Please add your own in the comments to help the other readers out!)

Users: the audience for your finished map

Before you begin a cartography project, you must take some time to examine the needs of your users. To do this, first ask yourself whether the user is a narrowly defined person/group or whether it is a broad audience.

Narrowly defined users can be, for example: your boss, the executive suite at your company, or permit applicants.

Broad audience users can be, for example: readers of National Geographic, visitors to a non-niche website, or national park visitors.

Narrowly Defined Users

It’s not too hard to identify what these users already know and don’t know. In terms of what they already know, this can help you add items to the map that the user is used to and therefore will increase the map’s credibility and ease-of-use. It can also help you decide what is not necessary to include on the map, since it is already known. For example, let’s say you have to present a paper map to a group of county commissioners. If you already know that the county commissioners are used to seeing paper maps with USGS topographic backgrounds, then you could use a USGS topographic background on your own map. It also stands to reason that those commissioners are pretty familiar with the basic geography of their county so prominent county-name labels would not be necessary.

The narrowly defined users also have a certain number of things that they don’t know (i.e., the reason for the map). List these and ensure that your map covers all of them. Keep an agile design philosophy as you go so that you can incorporate new items as they come, since it isn’t always possible to enumerate all the unknowns at the beginning – though easier here than with broad audience users. For example, you could be making a map for a school redistricting committee. Your list of user unknowns might be include current district boundaries, population density, demographics, and future population growth patterns. Make sure that all the items on this list make it onto the final map. These items will drive the design in that you must revisit the list during implementation to ensure that these items stand out.

Broad Audience Users

If you have broad audience users then the first thing to consider is what kind of context you need. This can be difficult for you if you are too familiar with the data because you won’t be able to determine which details will be helpful to the user and which will simply obfuscate the results. Ask several potential users for their input at this stage. Ask them what basic geographic elements they will need to gain a quick overall understanding of the location. Then make several mock-ups and ask them for their input again, specifically in terms of what elements are potentially confusing to them. For example, a map of oil usage statistics in the U.S. for an international magazine audience might be originally created with abbreviations for the surrounding countries of Canada and Mexico. Your test-users will point out that the abbreviations, while perhaps known to those in the U.S., should be spelled out.

A good idea is to create mock-ups for this group with varying scales. Your mission is to find out from the test-users which scale gives them the most location-awareness while sacrificing the least amount of detail. To do this, the best method is to ask the questions separately (and without jargon) as in, “Which map or maps are zoomed-in too far for you to understand the location? Which map or maps does not show you [insert map purpose here] well enough?”

Remember:

1) Narrowly defined users: What does the user already know? What does the user not yet know that you want the map to tell them?
2) Broad audience users: What are the necessary geographic details that show the user where the location is? What elements will obfuscate the map’s message?