TESTING THE USABILITY OF WELL SCALED
C.P.J.M. van Elzakker1, P.J.M. van
Oosterom2, I. Delikostidis1
1 - International Institute for Geo-Information Science and
Earth Observation (ITC), Enschede, the
2 -
elzakker@itc.nl
The use of geo-information in mobile devices (smartphones,
PDA's) is constantly increasing. Map displays play a prominent part in this,
although they suffer from limitations set by the small screens, storage
capacity and processing power of these devices. With the availability of high
bandwidth wireless connections it should be possible to overcome some of these
limitations and up-to-date map displays may be generated at the right level of
detail and adjusted to the needs of the users. In this context, a Dutch
research project started in 2006 with User-Centered Design (UCD),
generalization and mobile geo-applications as keywords (see http://www.gdmc.nl/uwsm2/).
Generalization is particularly relevant for mobile
geo-applications. Not only because zooming is a very important way of
interaction of users with the map interface, but also because the progressive
transfer of geo-information from server to device may be beneficial to
usability (e.g. first retrieve 'rough' representations and get additional
detail when required). With smooth zooming, realized through progressive
transfer, map scale may change continuously in an animation style of
visualization. This may help users to orient themselves. Part of the research
deals with the application of the GAP-face tree / GAP-edge forest concepts in
variable scale topological data structures suitable for progressive data
transfer.
These concepts will be implemented in prototypes of mobile
geo-applications that will be developed through UCD techniques. One of the use
cases, for which use scenarios are developed in UML, is a service for users who
want to park their cars in
The paper that will be presented at ICC