Area cartograms are map-based data visualizations in which the area of each map region is proportional to the data value it represents. Long utilized in print media, area cartograms have also become increasingly popular online, often accompanying news articles and blog posts. Despite their popularity, there is a dearth of cartogram generation tools accessible to non-technical users unfamiliar with Geographic Information Systems software. Few tools support the generation of contiguous cartograms (i.e., area cartograms that faithfully represent the spatial adjacency of neighboring regions). We thus reviewed existing contiguous cartogram software and compared two web-based cartogram tools: fBlog and go-cart.io. We experimentally evaluated their usability through a user study comprising cartogram generation and analysis tasks. The System Usability Scale was adopted to quantify how participants perceived the usability of both tools. We also collected written feedback from participants to determine the main challenges faced while using the software. Participants generally rated go-cart.io as being more usable than fBlog. Compared to fBlog, go-cart.io offers a greater variety of built-in maps and allows importing data values by file upload. Still, our results suggest that even go-cart.io suffers from poor usability because the graphical user interface is complex and data can only be imported as a comma-separated-values file. We also propose changes to go-cart.io and make general recommendations for web-based cartogram tools to address these concerns.

翻译：面积图是一种基于地图的数据可视化方式，其中每个地图区域的面积与其所代表的数据值成比例。面积图长期以来被用于印刷媒体，近年来在网络上也日益流行，常伴随新闻文章和博客帖子出现。然而，尽管其广受欢迎，针对不熟悉地理信息系统软件的非技术用户可用的面积图生成工具仍然匮乏。支持生成连续面积图（即能够忠实反映相邻区域空间邻接关系的面积图）的工具更是寥寥无几。为此，我们回顾了现有的连续面积图软件，并对两款基于网络的工具——fBlog和go-cart.io——进行了比较。我们通过一项包含面积图生成与分析任务的用户研究，实验性地评估了它们的可用性。采用系统可用性量表来量化参与者对两款工具可用性的感知，同时收集参与者的书面反馈，以确定使用软件过程中面临的主要挑战。总体而言，参与者认为go-cart.io的可用性高于fBlog。与fBlog相比，go-cart.io提供了更丰富的内置地图选项，并支持通过文件上传导入数据值。然而，我们的结果表明，即使go-cart.io也存在可用性较差的问题，因为其图形用户界面复杂，且数据只能以逗号分隔值文件格式导入。我们还对go-cart.io提出了改进建议，并为基于网络的面积图工具提供了通用性建议，以解决这些问题。