Cartographers in Cubicles: How Training and Preferences of Mapmakers Interplay with Structures and Norms in Not-for-Profit Organizations

2025-04-13

AI Summary

This study investigates how cartographers in nonprofit and governmental organizations dynamically negotiate institutional norms, organizational constraints, and personal expertise when creating choropleth maps. Through in-depth interviews with 16 cartographers and GIS specialists from government agencies and NGOs—analyzed via thematic coding and workflow analysis—it systematically uncovers how organizational context implicitly shapes all stages of the mapping pipeline: data preparation, classification (binning), color assignment, and post-processing. The research identifies both cross-institutional points of decision variability and stable patterns of practice, proposing a causal framework for deviations from formal cartographic guidelines. It further outlines empirically grounded recommendations for improving cartographic education to better align with organizational realities. Bridging cartography, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), and human–computer interaction (HCI), this work provides empirical foundations and co-design insights for information visualization practice.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Other Foundations of Constraint Satisfaction
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Choropleth maps are a common and effective way to visualize geographic thematic data. Although cartographers have established many principles about map design, data binning and color usage, less is known about how mapmakers make individual decisions in practice. We interview 16 cartographers and geographic information systems (GIS) experts from 13 government organizations, NGOs, and federal agencies about their choropleth mapmaking decisions and workflows. We categorize our findings and report on how mapmakers follow cartographic guidelines and personal rules of thumb, collaborate with other stakeholders within and outside their organization, and how organizational structures and norms are tied to decision-making during data preparation, data analysis, data binning, map styling, and map post-processing. We find several points of variation as well as regularity across mapmakers and organizations and present takeaways to inform cartographic education and practice, including broader implications and opportunities for CSCW, HCI, and information visualization researchers and practitioners.

Problem

• How mapmakers' training and preferences influence choropleth map design decisions
• Impact of organizational structures and norms on mapmaking workflows
• Variation and regularity in mapmakers' adherence to cartographic guidelines

Innovation

• Interviewing cartographers for decision insights
• Analyzing organizational norms in mapmaking
• Exploring cartographic education and practice implications