During drawing process, participants did not receive any information about using colours. However, colour palette embedded in MS Paint was ready to use when one needs. Other than three novice and five expert participants choosing to use only black colour, remaining participants delivered coloured sketch maps. Our colour assessment criteria regarded the colour correspondence of an element drawn on the sketch map with the one on the original map. We also paid attention to whether the elements drawn in same colour represent the same category.
Novices depicted the map elements slightly better using corresponding colours. However, this surprising difference between novices and experts was not statistically significant, F(1,55)= 0.331, p=0.568. The biggest difference in performance was in hydrology (14.9%) (Figure 11). This result can be related to the non-existing elements on the sketch maps (since we assigned “0” for the goodness of shape of absent elements) or some experts did not prefer to use colour.