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Introduction
GIS has been around for almost 40 years, yet the number of users remains relatively small, and the level of skills required from an operator remains high. Why?
A significant part of the answer lies in the area of Human-Computer Interaction - but there aren't any textbooks for a GIS developer to pick off the shelf to provide the guidelines and information needed to create a successful GIS interface.
This book aims to fill this gap, as well as discussing the wider area of Geospatial technologies that are currently emerging.
This website is a 'wiki' and has been set up to facilitate the process of designing the book's content and creating the team that will write it.
The need for the book emerged from the fact that GIS and other applications of computerised mapping have gained popularity in recent years. Today, computer-based maps are common on the World Wide Web, mobile phones, satellite navigation systems and in various desktop computing packages. The more sophisticated packages that allow the manipulation and analysis of geographical information are used in the location decisions of new businesses, and for public service delivery in respect of planning decisions by local and central government.. Many more applications exist and some estimate that several million people across the world are using GIS in their daily work.
Yet, many applications of GIS are hard to learn and to master. This is understandable as, until quite recently, the main focus of software vendors in the area of GIS was on the delivery of basic functionality and development of methods to present and manipulate geographical information using the available computing resources. As a result, little attention was paid to usability aspects of GIS. This is evident in many public and private systems where the terminology, conceptual design and structure are all centred around the engineering of GIS and not on the needs and concepts that are familiar to the user.
This situation can be rectified by using lessons that have been learned from the last 20 years of research in this field.
The textbook will provide an introduction to HCI and usability aspects of Geographical Information Systems and Science and the Geospatial technologies that are based on GIS and GIScience (GISc). Its aim is to introduce the principles of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); to discuss the special usability aspects of geospatial technologies which designers and developers need to take into account when developing such systems; and to offer a set of tried and tested frameworks, matrices and techniques that can be used within GIS projects.
The book will cover a range of topics, from the cognitive models of geographical representation to interface design. It will provide the reader with frameworks and techniques that can be used and descriptions of case studies in which these techniques have been used for computer mapping applications.
This website is a call for this collaboration. You can decide what level of commitment will suit you over the next 18 months:
The process of writing a book in this way should be enjoyable and produce a book that will be useful for you and your students.
On the site you can find the following sections:
A significant part of the answer lies in the area of Human-Computer Interaction - but there aren't any textbooks for a GIS developer to pick off the shelf to provide the guidelines and information needed to create a successful GIS interface.
This book aims to fill this gap, as well as discussing the wider area of Geospatial technologies that are currently emerging.
This website is a 'wiki' and has been set up to facilitate the process of designing the book's content and creating the team that will write it.
The need for the book emerged from the fact that GIS and other applications of computerised mapping have gained popularity in recent years. Today, computer-based maps are common on the World Wide Web, mobile phones, satellite navigation systems and in various desktop computing packages. The more sophisticated packages that allow the manipulation and analysis of geographical information are used in the location decisions of new businesses, and for public service delivery in respect of planning decisions by local and central government.. Many more applications exist and some estimate that several million people across the world are using GIS in their daily work.
Yet, many applications of GIS are hard to learn and to master. This is understandable as, until quite recently, the main focus of software vendors in the area of GIS was on the delivery of basic functionality and development of methods to present and manipulate geographical information using the available computing resources. As a result, little attention was paid to usability aspects of GIS. This is evident in many public and private systems where the terminology, conceptual design and structure are all centred around the engineering of GIS and not on the needs and concepts that are familiar to the user.
This situation can be rectified by using lessons that have been learned from the last 20 years of research in this field.
The textbook will provide an introduction to HCI and usability aspects of Geographical Information Systems and Science and the Geospatial technologies that are based on GIS and GIScience (GISc). Its aim is to introduce the principles of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); to discuss the special usability aspects of geospatial technologies which designers and developers need to take into account when developing such systems; and to offer a set of tried and tested frameworks, matrices and techniques that can be used within GIS projects.
The book will cover a range of topics, from the cognitive models of geographical representation to interface design. It will provide the reader with frameworks and techniques that can be used and descriptions of case studies in which these techniques have been used for computer mapping applications.
The purpose of the site
The need for the book is clear, but writing a book as a collaborative process will be more satisfying and enjoyable. What's more, HCI and GIS is a wide area, and no one person has all the knowledge and expertise that is required to write a comprehensive text in this area. To create a truly great book, and to encourage others to join us in a quest for usable GIS, a coherent team is needed.This website is a call for this collaboration. You can decide what level of commitment will suit you over the next 18 months:
- If you are very busy and can just visit the site, please check the table of contents and the detailed description, this will be very helpful to ensure that the book is covering all the major topics properly.
- If you have a bit more time, and a collection of papers and publications on HCI and GIS, you can contribute to the bibliography and help in ensuring that it is comprehensive and useful. Any annotation of a publication is welcome.
- With a slightly higher commitment, you can contribute a case study or an example from your experience. This should be a short text (500-1000 words) which demonstrates a HCI issue and will be used in boxes throughout the book.
- We will also need reviewers, who will read the chapters and comment on them.
- Finally, you can become one of the leading authors, taking over the responsibility for a section of the book, writing a chapter or a section, and putting together the case studies or inviting a case study from one of the potential authors.
The process of writing a book in this way should be enjoyable and produce a book that will be useful for you and your students.
Content
Because this site is a wiki, you can edit any page on it. You are encouraged to edit any page on the site, add to the bibliography, change the table of contents or comment on it. No need to worry about erasing older versions, as these will be stored and can be retrieved if needed.On the site you can find the following sections:
mukih |
Latest page update: made by mukih
, Mar 29 2007, 11:30 AM EDT
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Keyword tags:
geospatial technologies
gis
HCI
mobile mapping
usablity
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