Indoortubes a Novel Design for Indoor Maps

Efforts within cartography on indoor maps have previously not received a lot of attention. Work that has been carried out on indoor maps often focus on map design very similar to an architectural style (Klippel et al. 2006, Ciavarella and Paternò 2004). In some cases the design has been of a more novel character where approaches with augmented and virtual realities have been carried out (Radoczky 2007, Müller et al. 2006). Common to these approaches is the depiction of one floor per map. As well, the primary user task is often solely personal navigation. In this article we present an innovative approach to indoor maps. The design is directly inspired by underground tube maps first developed by Harry Beck (Garland 1994) and today a common design for public transport maps. The main advantages of the map design are its simplicity and the possibility of including all floors in one map view. This allows the map user to easier comprehend the structure of the building without using several maps, as commonly needed with today’s indoor map designs. We present two different map styles each intended to satisfy different user groups and tasks depending on the user’s familiarity with the environment. In addition we motivate for new application areas suitable for indoor maps, especially large hospitals. We hypothesize that the design proposed in this article leans very well to displaying real-time dynamic geospatial information, such as patients, staff, equipment and room availability within hospitals. Due to the early phase of the work presented here we outline the needed further work and possibilities of technological platforms as well as evaluations necessary in order for the design to gain acceptance and success.