Please, Help Me! I Am Lost in Zoom

Abstract. LostInZoom is a new research project that will seek to design novel ways of zooming into multi-scale maps, to overcome the desert fog effect that occurs with current multi-scale cartography techniques. The desert fog effect makes you feel lost for a few seconds after a zoom in or out, because the map has changed. The idea developed in this project is to propose anchor-based zooming techniques, where salient landmarks salient at multiple scales serve as anchors between maps during the zoom. This paper discusses the main challenges that will be addressed in this project: (1) better understand and measure the desert fog effect with maps; (2) defining and modelling the best anchors for anchor-based zooming; (3) designing more progressive multi-scale maps to host these anchors; (4) designing staged animations based on anchors between maps at different scales.