Usability of Geographic Information: Current challenges and future directions

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The use of Geographic Information or GI, has grown rapidly in recent years. Previous research has identified the importance of usability and user centred design in enabling the proliferation and exploitation of GI. However, the design and development of usable GI is not simply a matter of applying the tried and tested usability methods that have been developed for software and web design. Dealing with data and specifically GI brings with it a number of issues that change the way usability and user centred design can be applied. This paper describes the outcomes of a workshop held in March 2010 exploring the core issues relating to GI usability. The workshop brought together an international group of twenty experts in both human factors and GI, from a wide range of academic and industrial backgrounds. These experts considered three key issues, the stakeholders in GI, key challenges applying usability to GI and the usability methods that can be successfully applied to GI. The result of this workshop was to identify some areas for future research, such as the production of meaningful metadata and the implications of blurring of the line between data producers and data consumers.

O Problema Da Qualidade De Dados Espaciais Na Era Das Informações Geográficas Voluntárias

“…Sabe-se, no entanto, da importância da satisfação do usuário para se atribuir o grau de qualidade às informações geográficas, o que está relacionado aos fatores humanos estudados por Parker (2012) e, também, à qualidade semântica ( VAN EXCEL et al, 2010). Adota-se, portanto, neste artigo, a proposição de que a satisfação do usuário é o principal indicador, o qual deve servir de parâmetro para a avaliação final da qualidade (semântica e posicional) (IVÁNOVÁ et al, 2013), conceito atrelado à usabilidade (ANDRIENKO et al, 2002; VAN ELZZAKER, 2004;PARKER, 2012;BROWN et al, 2012;ISO, 2011).…”

A New Age of Discovery: The Post-GIS Era

“…GIS was part of a big shift in the information age moving from resolving technical aspects to the enablement of critical spatial thinking. And that is without a guarantee of success: many users of satellite navigation systems who fail to update their databases become aware of this only through bad experience (BROWN et al 2012, BROWN et al 2010) alone and unfortunately not too few accidents.…”

Determination of Geo-Information Characteristics in the User Interaction With a System for Betterment Tax Calculation

“…In the last decades, researchers have pointed out that the production and use of maps is no longer an exclusive task of cartographers or geo-information experts (Green 1993, Brus, Dobesova, Kanok and Pechanec, 2010, Brown et al 2013. Technological advances in GIScience and Cartography, together with the easiness in acquisition and use of geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial data, have contributed to a large dissemination of geo-information, which allows virtually anyone to create cartographic products.…”

“…Technological advances in GIScience and Cartography, together with the easiness in acquisition and use of geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial data, have contributed to a large dissemination of geo-information, which allows virtually anyone to create cartographic products. However, significant problems can be observed, as a consequence of spreading geo-information in different human activities: the lack of theoretical knowledge in cartography results in cartographic products with communication problems (Green 1993), deficiencies in understanding the significance of data (and thus their analysis), lack of context for data use or data control (Brown et al, 2013), usability and interface interaction problems (Yun and Yufen, 2011), to point out a few.…”