Spatial Interface Design for the Web—A Question of Usability

In a web-based environment, a focus, whether intentional or not, on style over content, and technical and technological ‘whiz-bang-ery’ over simplicity and usability, can significantly decrease the usefulness of a product for an end user. This danger can be minimised via increased focus on understanding end user needs, characteristics and preferred modes of interaction combined with actual user involvement in the design, development and testing processes—known as user—centred design. Relatively little is understood about how users interact with web-based spatial interfaces. Many of the issues relating to presenting spatial information in a ‘screen-based’ environment that have been identified over the last decade are yet to be practicably tested in ‘real-world’ environments by either academia or industry. Additionally, the requirement for usable guidelines, rules and principles is yet to be fully met. Although cognitive/perceptual studies are required to fully understand how users interact with spatial content using ‘standard’ and alternative spatial tools, adherence to user-cantered design principles and the use of heuristics and small- and large-scale usability testing can be applied to improve both the utility and the usability of web sites (i.e. their usefulness). During web development, a user-centred approach to conceptual design, content development, interface design and functional design can be exploited to improve the user experience. This paper provides an overview of current usability research in both the Geospatial and more general web development fields. It presents a number of different user-centred techniques that focus specifically on practical ways in which to involve ‘real-worldrsquo; users in the spatial web-based application development process. It also outlines some of the issues associated with existing spatial interfaces.