Danyel Fisher over at Microsoft Research has a workshop paper up called How We Watch the City: Popularity and Online Maps (280kb PDF). The methodology is interesting, the ‘heat’ is generated from how many times a map tile is requested from Microsoft’s maps.live.com. The data was taken from 8 months worth of Virtual Earth tile server logs over 2006.
Therefor what is being displayed is where people are looking on the map. This was also done at different zoom levels, meaning that it’s also possible to see where people are looking within cities, here’s Seattle …
Although I’m kinda curious as to why people look at tiles along bridges, perhaps that’s just the average eyes-per-tile but they stand out against the water. Be interesting to see what the data looks like near realtime, or how much less than 8 months worth of data you’d need for the results to look pretty much the same.
For me what this shows, yet again, is that once maps are present, that after a certain time you can start to get rid of the original maps and just display the usage data for them to still be useful as maps (at the very general level).
Thanks Tom
Filed under: maps
During some user studies that we conducted at YRB we found that many map users are unfamiliar with zoom – they usually stay at one zoom level and pan to get to wherever they want to go. That could explain why they follow the bridges – start at maximum zoom and then pan along known routes (namely bridges) to get to where you want to go.
My hypothesis is that they are looking at online maps using the paper maps metaphor where you can pan but not zoom.
“Unfamiliar with zoom? Not me.
I stay at the same zoom level when I am trying to familiarize myself with the route I’m going to drive. Changing zoom levels is for when I only care about destinations, like when I’m going to actually be flying some place. Or maybe when I already know most of my way there, but don’t know the last bits of the route
I guess what I mean is that I want my view of the map to match my expected itinerary. I don’t “zoom out” while I’m driving, so I don’t so much when I’m scouting my route.
Why watch the bridges in Seattle? Lets see, early morning and late afternoon I commute across the bridges, so I’m looking twice to four times a day. ( I can vary my departure time based on traffic).
If my significant other commutes at a different time, I could check to let her know whats up (especially if internet access is limited for her).
Then if I’m going downtown Seattle to catch the Opera, or a sporting event, or a lecture at U Wash, I’d be checking from my home another time that day.
So the answer about bridge viewing on the net is
a) its to check on traffic
b) its “using the inet force, Luke”.
c) its in the car, or on my phone
That’s a nice thought Rich B, but these images aren’t in real time.
You might look at a video camera shot of the bridge.
But you aren’t looking at real time satellite photos.