Over the summer of 2013-2014, I received a Summer Research Scholarship with Victoria University of Wellington - VUW - and Spatial.IQ. The scholarship funded my work on a project to develop a set of usability heuristics for New Zealand local government web mapping applications. My time was split between the GIS lab at VUW and the Spatial IQ offices in the Botanic Gardens in Kelburn. I worked in collaboration with Mark Shaw (Director at Spatial.IQ) and Mairead de Roiste (Senior Lecturer of GIS at VUW).
The main aim of my summer’s project was to create a set of usability heuristics based on professional experience and a review of geospatial and general web usability literatures. The heuristics needed to cover each component of a web mapping application - accessibility (findability), the map itself, the functions of the application, its performance and overall user experience. I then evaluated local government websites across New Zealand and scored each local council’s web maps according to these heuristics based on three different use cases of varying degrees of complexity.
Evaluating the usability of local government web maps is a new extension of Spatial.IQ’s What’s My Spatial.IQ? project. What’s My Spatial.IQ looks at local government web mapping, the technology behind the mapping, and the usability of those mapping applications. By using a robust set of usability heuristics to determine the quality of local government web mapping applications, we can garner an understanding of the overall quality of local government web mapping in New Zealand in order to provide a starting point for improving the standard and value of local government map-based information provision.
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