Mobile Cartography: An International Cartographic Association (ICA) collective research agenda for mobile-first and responsive maps & visualizations

The article introduces a three-part research agenda for mobile-first maps and visualizations developed by the International Cartographic Association (ICA). Interactive mapping applications drawing on location based services and mobile technologies are ubiquitous in everyday life, fundamentally transforming how we consume maps and therefore experience places as we move through them. Accordingly, we need to update the established cartographic canon for mobile platforms as well as develop new techniques to ensure a productive and satisfying user experience with mobile maps and visualizations. Here, we describe a two-day workshop to develop a set of three research agendas on opportunities and challenges facing mobile cartography. Specifically, we discuss two major breakthroughs from the workshop: (1) a consensus definition of a 'mobile' or 'mobile-first' map or visualization to refer to a design that is both optimized for small screens and location-aware and (2) organization of the three-part research agenda based on the definition of a mobile user interaction as the dialogue between a human (user issues) and a map (design issues) mediated through a mobile device (technological issues). We summarize the three research agenda articles to introduce this special issue and conclude with a discussion on cross-cutting themes emerging since developing the special issue.