USeD - Usability Service enhancements to Digimap

An Introduction

Addy Pope 2011

What is USeD

USeD aims to improve the usability and learnability of a widely used research tool that provides access to valuable geospatial research data – specifically the data download of Ordnance Survey data from the JISC funded Digimap service.

What

Select 1 data product from a choice of 16

Define area

Pick data tiles

Define delivery format

21

4

3

Stats: • 48,000+ Digimap users• 74,000 data requests*• 1,000,000 data tiles

served** Based on Jan 2010 – Jan 2011

Why

Issues with the existing system include:

• current interface infers familiarity with OS products

• cannot download more than one dataset at a time

• cannot save user preferences • focused on data delivery issues rather than user

requirements• fails to address differences in users spatial

literacy.“Too hard to use” –

Geography and Environment

student“I find it a bit complicated” –

Engineering postgraduate“Really like the system but find

it hard to navigate around” –

Architecture postgraduate

How

• Investigate current use of service and extract a number of typical user personas

• Use personas to design enhanced interface and work flow process

• Run user testing on new interface (iterative)• Feed output of project into the Digimap data

downloader

Personas: • Should describe the main user groups from beginner

to expert• Persona profiling based on:

• User engagement / User interface analysis• Existing download database logs

Team

• Project Manager• Usability Expert• GIS analyst • Software Developers

Project blog: http://used.blogs.edina.ac.uk/