Spinning the wheel of design: evaluating geoportal Graphical User Interface adaptations in terms of human-centred design

ABSTRACT

Geoportals are used to support the sharing of geospatial data for various purposes. In recent years, the importance of such geoportals in an academic environment is highly recognized. Equipped with the latest and most detailed spatial datasets these academic geoportals can support universities in numerous activities including research and teaching. One of the key characteristics that significantly influences the effectiveness of the academic geoportals is their Graphical User Interface (GUI). GUI designers can now benefit from emerging web technologies that assist in the production of intuitive interfaces to ensure high efficiency, good User Experience (UE), maximum usability and simultaneously the minimum cognitive workload. In this paper, we introduce the new GUI of the Geodata Versatile Information Transfer environment geoportal, and we present the results of a between-subjects study with 20 participants for the evaluation and comparison of the previous and the latest version. The results show that the GUI adaptations done, have a positive influence to several indicators like efficiency, UE, usability and cognitive workload. Our findings additionally reveal the weaknesses of the latest design and give constructive feedback in order to identify in which areas we should further improve the GUI to keep spinning the wheel of design.

RÉSUMÉ

Les géoportails sont utilisés pour permettre le partage de données géospatiales pour de multiples usages. Ces dernières années le monde académique a reconnu l’importance de ces portails. Riche de jeu de données spatiales les plus récentes et les plus détaillées, ces géoportails académiques peuvent aider les universités dans de multiples activités d’enseignement et de recherche. Une des caractéristiques majeure qui influence de façon significative sur l’efficacité des géoportails académiques est leur interface graphique utilisateur (IGU). Les concepteurs d’IGU peuvent dorénavant bénéficier de technologies web émergeantes qui facilitent la production d’interfaces intuitives afin d’assurer une efficacité élevée, une bonne expérience utilisateur (EU), une utilisabilité maximale et simultanément une charge cognitive minimale. Dans ce papier, nous présentons la nouvelle IGU du portail de l’environnement de transfert d’information géographique versatile (GeoVITe) et nous présentons les résultats d’une évaluation de la nouvelle version et de comparaison avec la version précédente, évaluation faite auprès de 20 participants. Les résultats montrent que les adaptations de l’IGU ont une influence positive sur de nombreux indicateurs dont l’efficacité, l’EU, l’utilisabilité et la charge cognitive. Nos recherches ont de plus souligné les faiblesses de la dernière version et ont permis d’avoir des retours constructifs pour identifier dans quelle domaine de nouvelles améliorations de l’IGU seraient souhaitables afin de conserver la dynamique de la conception.

KEYWORDS:

• Geoportals
• Graphical User Interface and human-centred design
• usability and user experience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Charalampos Gkonos is a Research Associate at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation at ETH Zurich. He received his Diploma degree in Rural and Surveying Engineering at NTU Athens and his MSc degree in Geomatics at ETH Zurich. His research interests include but are not limited to web-cartography, GIS, HCI, sustainable development and cartographic education. His current work focuses on the dissemination and use of geodata for research purposes within the ETH domain besides teaching and cartographic education. Part of his work has been published in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, the Journal of Location Based Services and the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information.

Ionut Iosifescu Enescu is a senior researcher at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation of ETH Zurich. He holds degrees in Geomatics and Computer Science, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Cartography and Geoinformation from ETH Zurich in 2011. He is the technical project manager of ‘Geodata4SwissEDU’, a cooperation project for developing a Swiss national geoinformation service for education and research. He is a recognized expert in spatial data and software architectures for the geospatial domain.

Lorenz Hurni has been Associate Professor of Cartography and director of the Institute of Cartography at the ETH Zurich since November 1996 (Full Professor since October 2003). The emphasis of Hurni's research lies in cartographic data models and tools for the production of printed and multimedia maps. Another focus of research covers interactive, multidimensional multimedia map representations. Under his lead, the prizewinning multimedia 'Atlas of Switzerland', commissioned by the Federal Council, as well as the 'Swiss World Atlas', the official Swiss school atlas, commissioned by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education, are being developed.

ORCID

Charalampos Gkonos http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7282-1623

Ionut Iosifescu Enescu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1770-7833

Lorenz Hurni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0453-8743