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Mapinou: A Game to Assess the Skill of Using Pan-Scalar Maps

Authors Justin Berli, Guillaume Touya

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LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.13.pdf
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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Applied computing → Cartography
Keywords
  • cartography
  • pan-scalar map
  • sense of direction
  • spatial skill
  • serious game

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Abstract

The widespread adoption of topographic maps on smartphones, typically implemented as pan-scalar digital cartographic interfaces, has altered the competencies required for their effective interpretation and use. The skills necessary to navigate and analyze these maps now differ substantially from those associated with reading and employing traditional paper-based topographic maps. To facilitate a more rigorous assessment of these emerging competencies, the paper introduces a serious game, termed Mapinou, which is designed to be executable on any modern smartphone device. The game alternates between tasks that require the use of a pan-scalar map and spatial skill tests to study potential relations between the spatial skills of users and their competencies in pan-scalar map use. Our goal when designing this game was to propose a predictor of pan-scalar map use skills, and the spatial skill tests embedded in the current version of the game are intended to test the robustness of this prediction. In this paper, we analyze the data collected from almost two hundred early players of the game. The results show a weak but significant relation between the success in the game and the success to the water-level task, which is known to be related to spatial skills.

Cite As Get BibTex

Justin Berli and Guillaume Touya. Mapinou: A Game to Assess the Skill of Using Pan-Scalar Maps. In 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 393, pp. 13:1-13:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.13

Author Details

Justin Berli
  • Univ Gustave Eiffel, ENSG, IGN, LASTIG, F-77420 Champs-sur-Marne, France
Guillaume Touya
  • Univ Gustave Eiffel, ENSG, IGN, LASTIG, F-77420 Champs-sur-Marne, France

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101003012, LostInZoom).

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the anonymous players of Mapinou, so far and in the future, for their contribution to science. We would also like to thank Paul Bourcier, Maïeul Gruget, Bérénice Le Mao, Quentin Potié, and Laura Wenclik for their useful suggestions during the design of the game.

Supplementary Materials

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