Framy - visualising geographic data on mobile interfaces

When using a mobile device for navigating and querying a map, some visualisation and usability problems may arise due to small screens and limited interaction modes allowed by such devices. Recently, researchers have devoted their efforts to overcome these issues by introducing innovative approaches for developing advanced interfaces, capable of providing users with analytical information as well as visual summary of data. In this article, we propose a new visualisation technique, named Framy, which exploits a novel interaction metaphor for picture frames to provide hints about off-screen objects. It was conceived to cover a wider range of spatial data visualisation tasks, which may simultaneously involve different geographic layers. The technique has been embedded inside a mobile GIS application, MapGIS, designed to perform typical GIS operations and queries on mobile devices. A usability study has been performed in order to verify the benefits in efficacy, efficiency and subjective satisfaction coming from the adoption of Framy within the system.