Geoportal Usability Evaluation

GeoTest is a project initiated by Future Position X (a GIS cluster organization in Gävle, Sweden), the National Land Survey of Sweden (NLS) and the University of Gävle. The project aims to test Swedish geodata, services and geoportals and make sure they comply with the INSPIRE the other specifications. GeoTest has developed a method for testing the usability of geoportals. The method is based on the ISO 9241-11 framework, which splits the usability evaluation into three sub-parts consisting the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. By providing feedbacks from users in an organized way, the usability test provides geoportal developers with tools to validate the functions and the layout and to find possible problematic parts to be able to make better applications to meet both the organization and the end users’ needs. As a pilot test, the Swedish national geoportal, Geodataportalen, was tested for the usability. It validated the suggested method for testing the usability of geoportals

Geoportals: an internet marketing perspective

A geoportal is a web site that presents an entry point to geo-products (including geo-data) on the web. Despite their importance in (spatial) data infrastructures, literature suggest stagnating or even declining trends in visitor numbers. In this paper relevant ideas and techniques for improving performance are derived from internet marketing literature. We tested the extent to which these ideas are already applied in practice through a survey among 48 geoportals worldwide. Results show in many cases positive correlation with trends in visitor numbers. The ideas can be useful for geoportal managers developing their marketing strateg

Problems of Designing Geoportal Interfaces

The manuscript is devoted to analysis of the problem of designing graphical geoportal interfaces. The support points for the problem solutions are formulated and rationale of each of them is given. The emphasis was placed on the following orientations: to a flexible process of interface development, the need to introduce adaptability, progressive development, the motivated abandonment of geospatial content management systems and the use of third-party libraries where necessary, problem-solving and achieving goals. The lists of basic functional and qualitative requirements for graphical geoportal interfaces are given. In the last segment, the authors share their experience in the development of geoportal solutions

El usuario como factor de éxito en el diseño de un geoportal

Este trabajo pretende analizar la interacción del usuario final con un geoportal. Para este propósito, se evalúa la medida en que se cumplen las expectativas y necesidades del usuario, el grado probable de dificultad que enfrenta, así como el nivel de satisfacción que alcanza en un sitio web. Se analiza especialmente el caso en que el geoportal ha sido creado en base a objetivos y necesidades del promotor, pero sin tener en cuenta las expectativas, necesidades y limitaciones del usuario. Para este fin, se realizó el análisis del portal del Sistema de Información del Atlas Nacional de España en la web (SIANEweb) mediante técnicas inherentes al Diseño Centrado en el Usuario (DCU). Este enfoque es particularmente útil al evaluar la capacidad de un geoportal para resolver necesidades reales del usuario. El DCU es iterativo, por lo que se puede aplicar a cada una de las etapas en el desarrollo de un prototipo, así como a un sitio ya operativo como el caso del SIANEweb, con el fin de alcanzar o mejorar la usabilidad. Dado que el sitio seleccionado se encuentra actualmente operativo, este trabajo se centra en las fases de requisitos y de evaluación y, por lo tanto, no en la planificación, diseño y desarrollo de una aplicaciónweb. Este estudio ha permitido evidenciar los problemas que impiden el rendimiento óptimo del geoportal, limitando su facilidad de uso con diferentes niveles de incidencia para el SIANEweb y condicionando la satisfacción de los usuarios. Sobre la base de los resultados alcanzados, se proponen una serie de mejoras potenciales para el SIANEweb, que se pueden extrapolar a cualquier geoportal de características similares. Estas mejoras están clasificadas para cada perfil de usuario, sin embargo, los resultados se orientan a las necesidades comunes que manifiestan los dos grupos. Así mismo, se aportan datos cuantitativos de eficacia, eficiencia y satisfacción que podrían servir como punto de partida para una evaluación comparativa futura, que denote una experiencia más eficiente, agradable y exitosa para los usuarios, una vez incorporado el SIANEweb en un proceso de mejora de la usabilidad a través del enfoque DCU

Evaluación de Usabilidad del Sistema de Información del Atlas Nacional de España SIANEweb

Este trabajo pretende analizar la interacción del usuario final con un geoportal. Para este propósito, se evalúa la medida en que se cumplen las expectativas y necesidades del usuario, el grado probable de dificultad que enfrenta, así como el nivel de satisfacción que alcanza en un sitio web. Se analiza especialmente el caso en que el geoportal ha sido creado en base a objetivos y necesidades del promotor, pero sin tener en cuenta las expectativas, necesidades y limitaciones del usuario. Para este fin, se realizó el análisis del portal del Sistema de Información del Atlas Nacional de España en la web (SIANEweb) mediante técnicas inherentes al Diseño Centrado en el Usuario (DCU). Este enfoque es particularmente útil al evaluar la capacidad de un geoportal para resolver necesidades reales del usuario. El DCU es iterativo, por lo que se puede aplicar a cada una de las etapas en el desarrollo de un prototipo, así como a un sitio ya operativo como el caso del SIANEweb con el fin de alcanzar o mejorar la usabilidad. Dado que el sitio seleccionado se encuentra actualmente operativo, este trabajo se centra en las fases de requisitos y de evaluación, y por lo tanto no en la planificación, diseño y desarrollo de una aplicación web. Este estudio ha permitido evidenciar problemas que impiden el rendimiento óptimo del geoportal, limitando su facilidad de uso con diferentes niveles de incidencia para el SIANEweb y condicionando la satisfacción de los usuarios, uno de los indicadores clave en el éxito o fracaso de un geoportal. Sobre la base de los resultados alcanzados, se proponen una serie de mejoras potenciales para el SIANEweb, que se pueden extrapolar a cualquier geoportal de características similares. Estas mejoras están clasificadas para cada perfil de usuario, sin embargo los resultados se orientan a las necesidades comunes que manifiestan los dos grupos. Del mismo modo mediante la realización de un análisis DAFO sobre las necesidades y expectativas del usuario, se proponen pautas orientadas a las oportunidades detectadas, con el fin de centrarse no sólo en los actuales usuarios sino también en los usuarios potenciales de este subsistema del Atlas Nacional de España. Así mismo, se aportan datos cuantitativos que podrían servir como punto de partida para una evaluación comparativa futura, que denote una experiencia más eficiente, agradable y exitosa para los usuarios, una vez incorporado el SIANEweb en un proceso de mejora de la usabilidad a través del enfoque DCU. De manera sistémica, este estudio conlleva a la reflexión sobre la importancia del punto de vista del usuario, como factor de éxito o fracaso de un sitio web

Usability Patterns for Geoportals

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Current geoportals and metadata catalogues, as user interfaces for discovery and exploration for geodata do still suffer from lacking usability, regardless whether experts or non-expert users are considered. Design patterns are well established in software development to tackle frequently occurring problems. Usability patterns are a specialization of such design patterns to specifically address user interface issues and related software solutions. However, existing usability patterns are not sufficient to cope with GI-usability issues as for instance related to discovery of geodata. This poster submission introduces an adapted GI-usability pattern concept

Methods to Improve and Evaluate Spatial Data Infrastructures

This thesis mainly focuses on methods for improving and evaluating Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). The aim has been threefold: to develop a framework for the management and evaluation of an SDI, to improve the accessibility of spatial data in an SDI, and to improve the cartography in view services in an SDI. Spatial Data Infrastructure has been identified as an umbrella covering spatial data handling procedures. The long-term implementation of SDI increases the need for short/middle term feedbacks from different perspectives. Thus, a precise strategic plan and accurate objectives have to be defined for the implementation of an efficient environment for spatial data collection and exchange in a region. In this thesis, a comprehensive study was conducted to review the current methods in the business management literature to approach to an integrated framework for the implementation and evaluation of SDIs. In this context, four techniques were described and the usability of each technique in several aspects of SDI implementation was discussed. SDI evaluation has been considered as one of the main challenges in recent years. Lack of a general goal oriented framework to assess an SDI from different perspectives was one of the main concerns of this thesis. Among a number of the current methods in this research area, we focused on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a general evaluation framework covering all perspectives in an SDI. The assessment study opened a window to a number of important issues that ranged from the technical to the cartographic aspects of spatial data exchange in an SDI. To access the required datasets in an SDI, clearinghouse networks have been developed as a gateway to the data repositories. However, traditional clearinghouse networks do not satisfy the end user requirements. By adding a number of functionalities, we proposed a methodology to increase the percentage of accessing required data. These methods were based on predefined rules and additional procedures within web processing services and service composition subjects to develop an expert system based clearinghouses. From the cartography viewpoint, current methods for spatial data presentation do not satisfy the user requirements in an SDI environment. The main presentation problem occurs when spatial data are integrated from different sources. For appropriate cartography, we propose a number of methods, such as the polygon overlay method, which is an icon placement approach, to emphasize the more important layers and the color saturation method to decrease the color saturation of the unimportant layers and emphasize the foreground layer according to the visual hierarchy concept. Another cartographic challenge is the geometrical and topological conflicts in data shown in view services. The geometrical inconsistency is due to the artificial discrepancy that occurs when displaying connected information from different sources, which is caused by inaccuracies and different levels of details in the datasets. The semantic conflict is related to the definition of the related features, i.e., to the information models of the datasets. To overcome these conflicts and to fix the topological and geometric conflicts we use a semantic based expert system by utilizing an automatic cartography core containing a semantic rule based component. We proposed a system architecture that has an OWL (Web Ontology Language) based expert system to improve the cartography by adjusting and resolving topological and geometrical conflicts in geoportals

First approaches to the usability of Digital Map Libraries

The Internet is a powerful tool providing different online communication options on geographic approaches. In addition to searching, geoportals provide tools to visualize, explore and download information. Cartographic heritage contained in the Digital Map Libraries (DML) stands out as an exceptional case within the generic frame of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). There are useful and basic similarities between the global reality of an SDI as a distributed geoportal and a DML; conformance to standards, agreements and services. However, some technological and policy considerations must be taken into account apart from the characteristics common to all SDI in any thematic field. On a first approach to these peculiarities, it is necessary to search different ways to present old maps preserving the original information needed by researchers, without reducing visual quality and Web potentiality. As a specific geoportal in cartographic heritage, some usability recommendations should be taken into account when designing navigation browsers in the DML, apart from the application functionalities. Usability will play an important role to succeed in the provider- citizen communication process. Some specific experiences have been carried out in this field so far, trying to include the DML services in a local SDI prototype and introducing a first approach to visualization methodology. Conclusions are presented at the end, in order to carry out an in-depth study in the future