TY - JOUR
T1 - Card sorting for cartographic research and practice
AU - Roth, Robert E.
AU - Finch, Benjamin G.
AU - Blanford, Justine I.
AU - Klippel, Alexander
AU - Robinson, Anthony G.
AU - MacEachren, Alan M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Award #2009-ST-061-CI0001. A portion of this work was funded by the National Science Foundation Award #0924534. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2011/4
Y1 - 2011/4
N2 - In this article we describe the potential utility of the card sorting method for structuring and refining large map symbol sets. Simply defined, card sorting requires that participants organize a set of items (i.e., cards) into categories according to some characteristic(s) of the cards (i.e., the sorting criterion). Card sorting has been proposed as a method for delineating categories by researchers and practitioners in a variety of disciplines due to its ability to identify and explicate real or perceived structures in an information space; despite this, there is little reported application of card sorting within cartography. To facilitate application of card sorting to cartographic problems, we offer a framework that prescribes the appropriate experimental design settings for the method based on the stage in the design process and the goals of the study. We then demonstrate the utility of card sorting for cartography by describing a closed sorting study we conducted on the ANSI INCITS 415-2006 emergency mapping symbol standard. Our approach helped us identify several barriers to using the symbol standard, including areas of conceptual overlap among the categories included in the standard, potentially missing categories from the standard, and individual symbols in the standard that are consistently misclassified.
AB - In this article we describe the potential utility of the card sorting method for structuring and refining large map symbol sets. Simply defined, card sorting requires that participants organize a set of items (i.e., cards) into categories according to some characteristic(s) of the cards (i.e., the sorting criterion). Card sorting has been proposed as a method for delineating categories by researchers and practitioners in a variety of disciplines due to its ability to identify and explicate real or perceived structures in an information space; despite this, there is little reported application of card sorting within cartography. To facilitate application of card sorting to cartographic problems, we offer a framework that prescribes the appropriate experimental design settings for the method based on the stage in the design process and the goals of the study. We then demonstrate the utility of card sorting for cartography by describing a closed sorting study we conducted on the ANSI INCITS 415-2006 emergency mapping symbol standard. Our approach helped us identify several barriers to using the symbol standard, including areas of conceptual overlap among the categories included in the standard, potentially missing categories from the standard, and individual symbols in the standard that are consistently misclassified.
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U2 - 10.1559/1523040638289
DO - 10.1559/1523040638289
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80051748922
SN - 1523-0406
VL - 38
SP - 89
EP - 99
JO - Cartography and Geographic Information Science
JF - Cartography and Geographic Information Science
IS - 2
ER -