Object/subject

What is the purpose of your map?

What do you want to help someone learn about the world with your map? Are you helping someone navigate space? Or plan a trip? Or learn things about people who inhabit the place, now or in the past? Or learn about the distribution of one or more qualities of space?

In other words, what is your map really for, beyond just an assignment in a class?

Who is your map for?

Who will read your map? What does this audience already know? What customs do they have for thinking and reasoning about space? How does your map accommodate the knowledge that your audience will bring to reading your map?

What questions does your map help answer?

Did you make a list of the questions that you think people will try to answer with your map, or that you want to help people answer? Does everything on your map help someone answer these questions in some way? Is there anything on the map that doesn’t serve the map’s purpose? If there is, what are your reasons for keeping it on your map?

How will people interact with your map as an object in the world?

Where will the map live? On a computer screen, on paper, on some other media? How does the map fit into a layout or a book or an article or a poster or a wall, etc? How will people interact with the map? What constraints are posed by the environment that your map will eventually be a part of?