Formalizing Informal Geographic Information: Cross-Cultural Human
Subjects Testing
Mike Gould, Juan Nunes, David Comas, Max Egenhofer, Scott Freundschuh, and David
Mark
Abstract
Spatial relations between geographic entities must necessarily be
formalized for implementation--most notably in query languages and
overlay processing. Proposals for spatial query languages generally
state that "people want or need geographic information of type X
and they express this in manner Y," however, these assumptions
typically are drawn from introspection and small biased samples. We
describe seven human subjects tests which we have designed as part
of a collaborative research project, and using which some 600
people have been tested to date. The paper emphasizes the need to
adopt human subjects testing methods such as are commonly accepted
in human factors, in order to justify our statements regarding the
use of geographic information.