Exploring Visual Variables for Effective Web Cartography

Theoretical research in cartography has recently gained increasing momentum, primarily due to technologicaladvancements that allow for the convenient use of various traditional methodological approaches. For example,method for tracking user behavior can provide deep insights into the process of map reading, especially in the caseof simple tasks. Visual search is one of the primary tasks users encounter when working with cartographic signs andsign systems. The main method described in the article aims to analyze the interaction with cartographic signsthrough selection and evaluation of cartographic signs. In this study, a set of non-scaled cartographic symbols wasdesigned, incorporating various visual variables and their combinations. These combinations were used to create aweb map, which was tested by 84 participants using a traditional click-based method for identifying cartographicsymbols. The study examines how different visual variables influence the encoding of information and how the positionof point symbols within the map affects visual search performance. The main objective is to identify which variablesimprove the speed and accuracy with which users can read and interpret cartographic data.