Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesCurrent location-tracking solutions, along with general advances in software (e.g.,
development frameworks, visualization libraries) and hardware (e.g., cloud
computing, mobile devices), make it increasingly easy to capture and store geospatial
data to be exploited in various application areas. In this dissertation, we study the
possibilities of visualization techniques and visual analytics of geospatial (user) data
with the aim of helping/improving therapies in the realm of psychological health. To
this aim, a web-based visualization application was created as part of a larger
ecosystem of applications created by GEOTEC, including a mobile app to
systematically capture user’s geospatial data (i.e., GPS coordinates), and a metrics
analytical platform, which is capable of storing captured data and performing useful
analysis/calculations. The visualization tool was developed to support therapists to
make informed decisions pertinent to psychological illness depression interventions,
by allowing them to visually inspect, compare, and analyze captured and processed
data from monitored patients. Next to determining what visual elements of the
visualization tool best suited the needs of the case study, a quantitative and qualitative
evaluation was performed with therapists, in order to measure the resulting usefulness
of the tool, find out the drawbacks for further improvement, and to generate ideas for
future work and further applications in psychological health. As a result, the
visualization tool was generally found to be useable (SUS score of 86.5625), useful for
therapists to help during and to determine their therapy, and various useful extensions
and further application areas were discovered. Based on the result, we can conclude
that the tool may indeed become a beneficial mechanism for psychological
intervention in real-world settings