Amidst over 9,000 delegates from 87 countries, the findings of a pilot project to investigate cultural differences to symbol design and evaluation were presented at this year’s AAG, held in San Francisco, California from 29th March to 2nd April 2016, within series of sessions organised by the ICA Commission on Cognitive Visualization, the ICA Commission on Visual Analytics and the ICA Commission on Use, User, and Usability Issues. The research, conducted by Alex Kent and Jari Korpi, compared the original designs of a series of nine point symbols created by participants from three countries (Finland, Malta, and the UK) and how these were judged within each cohort. We are planning to make the instructions for this simple exercise available for download via the ICA Commission on Topographic Mapping website so that it can be run in  different countries and the results analysed and shared.

If you are interested to learn more about the annual meeting see the highlights here.