Variable Mapper: Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating an Online Tool for Multidimensional Spatial Data Visualization

Abstract

This paper presents a user study of Variable Mapper, an interactive web-based geospatial visualization tool that aims to address the gap in multidimensional spatial data analysis. In the era of big data, researchers and policymakers often grapple with complex, multi-faceted concepts situated within ‘wicked problems.’ These problems require the investigation of large numbers of interacting social and environmental variables and consider the data with different lenses. However, tools for visually exploring and representing such data remain inaccessible to researchers and policymakers with limited technical expertise. To address this gap, we describe and evaluate a new interactive tool for visualizing multidimensional geospatial data, which has been built in three stages: (1) development of a prototype through a case study of urban ‘superdiversity’, (2) refinement of the prototype by adding a case study of ‘liveability’, and (3) evaluation of the tool through a systematic user study. The paper explains the process of interdisciplinary collaboration in the development, implementation, and evaluation of the tool and discusses the results of the user study. Using mixed-method analysis, we generated six insights based on the user study: situating the data, locating multiple visualizations, making data apparent, comparing small or missing values, challenges in three dimensions, and managing cognitive load. These insights from the development, implementation, and evaluation of Variable Mapper contribute to the wider ongoing challenge of visualizing multidimensional geospatial data.