Over the last few years, user interfaces of commercial geographic information systems have become more and more advanced. Users benefit from such advancements by investing less time into learning a particular system, and spending less time when executing a particular task in production mode. GIS user interface design is still a cumbersome exercise in which detailed programming skills are required and most often the tools provided are only remotely suitable for designing user interfaces for dealing with geographic data. Commercial systems are just in the process of filling these gaps. With the advent of GIS user interface design tools such as Arc/View 2, system designers will have for the first time the opportunity to build customized GIS user interfaces rapidly and at a high level, without the need to invest into learning low-level graphics programming, much like most user interface management systems (UIMS) require.
We will explore the usability of Arc/View 2 for advanced GIS user interface design. For this purpose, we will design a small set of scenarios for which we will (1) develop a mock-up to study the soundness of the interface, (2) map the interface onto existing Arc/View II tools, and (3) if the necessary tools are available, develop a prototype in Arc/View II.
Last updated on August 17, 1995.
[ GIS User Interface Design | Spatial Database Research Group | NCGIA Maine ]