Designing electronic maps: an ethnographic approach

In Designing electronic maps: an ethnographic approach, Barry Brown and Eric Laurier present and ethnographic study of the city tourists’ practices that draws out a number of implications for sesingin map technologies. They suggest that there are many opportunities for mappingg systems which fit tourist practice better than existing systems.

Collaborative map use
An important par of tourism map use it sharing the use of maps with others. For this reason, maps systems which offer only a small display, or display which can only be used by one user at a time.

Combining electronic maps and guidebooks
Simply copying content into an eBook is unlikely to be successful if that content is much harder to use. One solution to this could be to produce paper maps which are designed to be used with an electronic guidebook

Supporting pre-visiting and planning
We observed that thourists frequently used maps and guides before visiting a place (pre-visiting). In this way tourists can plan what they want to do, but also can pass the time while waiting for public transport. Presenting information to tourists while they are actually at an attraction may have limited utility, since at that point the environment is likely to contain richer sources of information than can be provided by a device. Mobile system could support “occasioned mpas”. These are maps which are drawn for a particular purpose (e.g. a shopping map when going shopping).