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Arnoud de Boer edited this page Mar 30, 2016 · 22 revisions

Lesson 1: Provide a spatial data platform that is in line with user needs, expertise and tasks

A spatial data publication platform is an online platform which different users enables to publish, view or edit spatial data. To make the platform succesfull and widely supported, the platform must meet user’s needs and be adapted to user’s expertise and tasks.

###Why?

Because different users:

  1. need different information, for example a user who is interested in locations of bicycle stands, does not need a map with both bicycle stands and trees on it.
  2. have different expertise, for example GIS-experts have more experience in editing topographic objects in a map, then a non-GIS-user.
  3. have different tasks, qualifications and responsibilities, for example sensitive information from a public data set is not available to ordinary users.
  4. speak different languages, for example the formal designation ‘greening’ for the maintainer of the public green spaces, while ordinary people will look for ‘park’.

###Intended outcome

A platform that adapts the data and features to the user, which is easy to use, creating a community.

###Possible approach User centred design of the platform applies: extensive attention should be given to needs, wants and limitations of the end-user. The platform has to be kept as simple as possible, in order to make it approachable for expert and non-expert owners and users of spatial data.

These features increase the ease of use and intended use:

  1. Ensure good search functionality, for example let users search for whole datasets or single objects based on space, time and theme (keyword or category).
  2. Hide specialists functions for non-expert users, for example do not give ordinary users not the option to perform coordinate transformation.
  3. Grant privileges and roles to users (aka user management), for example work with a base layer and an edit layer, whereby the owner of the dataset (who is responsible for the correctness of the data) can commit changes made by an ordinary user from the edit layer to the base layer.
  4. Translate the terminology of the data into the language of the user, for example, create a link table to convert from formal designation 'greening' to plain language 'park'.

###How to test Usability testing.

###Evidence ...

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