Google Research Award – Identifying Learning Benefits of Google Earth Tours in Education

It is always nice to announce good news. Back in February, together with Richard Treves at the University of Southampton, I submitted an application to the Google’s Faculty Research Award program for a grant to investigate Google Earth Tours in education. We were successful in getting a grant worth $86,883 USD.  The project builds on my expertise in usability studies of geospatial technologies, including the use of  eye tracking and other usability engineering techniques for GIS and Richard’s expertise in Google Earth tours and education, and longstanding interest in usability issues.

In this joint UCL/Southampton project, UCL will be lead partner and we will appoint a junior researcher for a year to develop run experiments that will help us in understanding of the effectiveness of Google Earth Tours in geographical learning, and we aim to come up with guidelines to their use. If you are interested, let me know.

Our main contact at Google for the project is Ed Parsons. We were also helped by Tina Ornduff and Sean Askay who acted as referees for the proposal.
The core question that we want to address is “How can Google Earth Tours be used create an effective learning experience?”

So what do we plan to do? Previous research on Google Earth Tours (GETs) has shown them to be an effective visualization technique for teaching geographical concepts, yet their use in this way is essentially passive.  Active learning is a successful educational approach where student activity is combined with instruction to enhance learning.  In the proposal we suggest that there is great education value in combining the advantages of the rich visualization of GETs with student activities. Evaluating the effectiveness of this combination is the purpose of the project, and we plan to do this by creating educational materials that consist of GETs and activities and testing them against other versions of the materials using student tests, eye tracking and questionnaires as data gathering techniques.

We believe that by improving the techniques by which spatial data is visualized we are improving spatial information access overall.
A nice aspect of the getting the project funded is that it works well with a project that is led by Claire Ellul and Kate Jones and funded by JISC. The G3 project, or “Bridging the Gaps between the GeoWeb and GIS” is touching on similar aspects and we surely going to share knowledge with them.
For more background on Richard Treves, see his blog (where the same post is published!)

Some important questions about the usability of geospatial technologies

At the beginning of May, I gave a lecture at the UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) seminar titled ‘Interacting with Geospatial Technologies – Overview and Research Challenges’. The talk was somewhat similar to the one that I gave at the BCS Geospatial SIG. However, I was trying to answer a question that I was asked during a UCLIC seminar in 2003, when, together with Carolina Tobón, I presented the early work on usability of GIS for e-government applications. During that talk, the discussion was, as always is in UCLIC, intensive. One core question that remained with me from the discussion was: ‘What makes geospatial technology special or is it just another case of a complex and demanding information system that you should expect difficulties with and spend time to master?’

Over the years, I have been trying to improve the answer beyond the ‘it’s special because it’s about maps‘ or ‘geospatial information comes in large volumes and requires special handling‘ or similar partial answers. In the book Interacting with Geospatial Technologies different chapters deal with these aspects in detail. During the talk, I tried to cover some of them. In particular, I highlighted the lag of geospatial technologies behind other computing technologies (an indication of complexity), the problems of devices such as SatNavs that require design intervention in the physical world to deal with a design fault (see image), and the range of problems in interfaces of GIS as were discovered in the snapshot study that was carried out by Antigoni Zafiri.

There was an excellent discussion after the presentation ended. Some of the very interesting questions that I think need addressing are the following:

• In the talk, I highlighted that examples of spatial representations exist in non-literate societies, and that, therefore, the situation with computers, where textual information is much more accessible than geographical information, is something that we should consider as odd. The question that was raised was about the accessibility of these representations – how long does it take people from the societies that use them to learn them? Is the knowledge about them considered privileged or held by a small group?

• For almost every aspect of geospatial technology use, there is some parallel elsewhere in the ICT landscape, but it is the combination of issues – such as the need for a base map as a background to add visualisation on top of it, or the fact that end users of geospatial analysis need the GIS operators as intermediaries (and the intermediaries are having problems with operating their tools – desktop GIS, spatial databases etc. – effectively) – that creates the unique combination that researchers who are looking at HCI issues of GIS are dealing with. If so, what can be learned from existing parallels, such as the organisations where intermediaries are used in decision making (e.g. statisticians)?

• The issue of task analysis and considerations of what the user is trying to achieve were discussed. For example, Google Maps makes the task of ‘finding directions from A to B’ fairly easy by using a button on the interface that allows the user to put in the information. To what extent do GIS and web mapping applications help users to deal with more complex, temporally longer and less well-defined tasks? This is a topic that was discussed early on in the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and GIS literature in the 1990s, and we need to continue and explore.

In my talk I used a slide about a rude group in Facebook that relates to a specific GIS package. I checked it recently and was somewhat surprised to see that it is still active. I thought that it would go away with more recent versions of the software that should have improved its usability. Clearly there is space for more work to deal with the frustration of the users. Making users happy is, after all, the goal of usability engineering…

G3 – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS

The G3 Project, is a new project led by Claire Ellul and  Kate Jones and funded by the JISC geospatial working group.  The project’s aim is to create an interactive online mapping tutorial system for students in areas that are not familiar with GIS such as urban design, anthropology and environmental management.

The project can provides a template for the introduction of geographical concepts to new groups of learners. By choosing a discipline specific scenario, key geographic concepts and functions will be presented to novices in a useful and useable manner so the learning process is improved. Users will be introduced to freely available geographic data relevant to their particular discipline and know where to look for more. G3 Project will create a framework to support learners and grow their confidence without facing the difficult interfaces and complexity of desktop mapping systems that are likely to create obstacles for students, with the feeling that ‘this type of analysis is not for me’.

Check the project’s blog for regular updates and developments.

A postdoctoral position and 3 PhD studentships in Extreme Citizen Science

Following successful funding for the European Union FP7 EveryAware and the EPSRC Extreme Citizen Science activities, the department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at UCL is inviting applications for a postdoctoral position and 3 PhD studentships. Please note that these positions are open to students from any EU country.

These positions are in the ‘Extreme Citizen Science’ (ExCiteS) research group. The group’s activities focus on the theory, methodologies, techniques and tools that are needed to allow any community to start its own bottom-up citizen science activity, regardless of the level of literacy of the users. Importantly, Citizen Science is understood in the widest sense, including perceptions and views – so participatory mapping and participatory geographic information are integral parts of the activities.

The research themes that the group explores include Citizen Science and Citizen Cyberscience; Community and participatory mapping/GIS; Volunteered Geographic Information (OpenStreetMap, Green Mapping, Participatory GeoWeb); Usability of geographic information and geographic information technology, especially with non-expert users;  GeoWeb and mobile GeoWeb technologies that facilitate Extreme Citizen Science; and identifying scientific models and visualisations that are suitable for Citizen Science.

The positions that are opening now are part of an effort to extend Dr Jerome Lewis’ research with forest communities (see BBC Report and report on software development):

Research Associate in Extreme Citizen Science – a 2-year, postdoctoral research associate position commencing 1 May 2011.

The research associate will lead the development of an ‘Intelligent Map’ that allows non-literate users to upload data securely; and the system should allow the users to visualise their information with data from other users. Permissions need to be developed in accordance with cultural sensitivities. As uploaded data from multiple users sharing the same system increase over time, repeating patterns will begin to emerge that indicate particular environmental trends.

The role will also include some general project-management duties, guiding the PhD students who are working on the project. Travel to Cameroon to the forest communities that we are working with is necessary.

Complete details about this post and application procedure are available on the UCL jobs website.

PhD Studentship – understanding citizen scientists’ motivations, incentives and group organisation – a 3.5-year fully funded studentship. We are looking for applicants with a good honours degree (1st Class or 2:1 minimum), and an MA or MSc in anthropology, geography, sociology, psychology or related discipline. The applicant needs to be familiar with quantitative and qualitative research methods, and be able to work with a team that will include programmers and human-computer interaction experts who will design systems to be used in citizen science projects. Travel will be required as part of the project. A willingness to live for short periods in remote forest locations in simple lodgings, eating local food, will be necessary. French language skills are desirable.

The research itself will focus on motivations, incentives and understanding of the needs and wishes of participants in citizen science projects. We will specifically focus on engagement of non-literate people in such projects and need to understand how the process – from data collection to analysis – can be made meaningful and useful for their everyday life. The research will involve using quantitative methods to analyse large-scale patterns of engagement in existing projects, as well as ethnographic and qualitative study of participants. The project will include working with non-literate forest communities in Cameroon as well as marginalised communities in London.

Complete details about this post and application procedure are available on the UCL jobs website.

PhD Studentship in geographic visualisation for non-literate citizen scientists - a 3.5-year fully funded studentship. The applicant should possess a good honours degree (1st Class or 2:1 minimum), and an MSc in computer science, human-computer interaction, electronic engineering or related discipline. In addition, they need to be familiar with geographic information and software development, and be able to work with a team that will include anthropologists and human-computer interaction experts who will design systems to be used in citizen science projects. Travel will be required as part of the project. A willingness to live for short periods in remote forest locations in simple lodgings, eating local food, will be necessary. French language skills are desirable.

Complete details about this post and application procedure are available on the UCL jobs website.

In addition, we offer a PhD Studentship on How interaction design and mobile mapping influences participation in Citizen Science, which is part of the EveryAware project and is also open to any EU citizen.

EveryAware – Enhanced environmental awareness through social information technologies

Image via Wikipedia

EveryAware is a three-year research project, funded under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The project’s focus is on the development of Citizen Science techniques to allow people to find out about their local environmental conditions, and then to see if the provision of this information leads to behaviour change.

The abstract of the project highlights the core topics that will be covered:

‘The enforcement of novel policies may be triggered by a grassroots approach, with a key contribution from information and communication technology (ICT). Current low-cost sensing technologies allow the citizens to directly assess the state of the environment; social networking tools allow effective data and opinion collection and real-time information-spreading processes. Moreover theoretical and modelling tools developed by physicists, computer scientists and sociologists allow citizens to analyse, interpret and visualise complex data sets.

‘The proposed project intends to integrate all crucial phases (environmental monitoring, awareness enhancement, behavioural change) in the management of the environment in a unified framework, by creating a new technological platform combining sensing technologies, networking applications and data-processing
tools; the Internet and the existing mobile communication networks will provide the infrastructure hosting this platform, allowing its replication in different times and places. Case studies concerning different numbers of participants will test the scalability of the platform, aiming to involve as many citizens as possible thanks to
low cost and high usability. The integration of participatory sensing with the monitoring of subjective opinions is novel and crucial, as it exposes the mechanisms by which the local perception of an environmental issue, corroborated by quantitative data, evolves into socially-shared opinions, and how the latter, eventually, drives behavioural changes. Enabling this level of transparency critically allows an effective communication of desirable environmental strategies to the general public and to institutional agencies.’

The project will be coordinated by Fondazione ISI (Institute for Scientific Interchange) and the Physics department at Sapienza Università di Roma. Other participants include the L3S Research Center at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität, Hannover, and finally the Environmental Risk and Health unit at the Flemish Institute of Technological Research (VITO).

At UCL, I will run the project together with Dr Claire Ellul. We will focus on Citizen Science, the interaction with mobile phones for data collection and understanding behaviour change. We are looking for a PhD student to work on this project so, if this type of activity is of interest, get it touch.

Maps are wonderful, but GIS are hard to use. What can we do about it?

These are the slides from the presentation that I gave to the BCS Geospatial SG.

The talk abstract is:

Here is a useful party trivia: as a form of human communication, maps pre-date text by thousands of years – some early spatial depictions are 25,000 years old, whereas writing emerged only 4000 years ago. When it comes to computing, the reverse is true: the first wide use of computing is from the early 1950s, whereas the first effort to create a GIS only started in 1966. There are good reasons for this, chief among them is the complexity of handling geographical information in digital computers. An adverse impact of this challenge is that for many years geospatial technologies developers focused on functionality and not on the interaction with end-users. The result of this focus is that while word processors and spreadsheets became popular in the early 1980s, only with the emergence of ‘Web Mapping 2.0′ in 2005, GIS and geospatial technologies became more popular, albeit far from universally usable.

The talk covered interaction and user aspects of geospatial technologies, pointing to issues that permeate the usability and usefulness of geographical information itself (e.g. why ESRI shapefile is a popular format despite its drawbacks?), the programming of geospatial technology (e.g. why OGC WMS did not spark the mashup revolution, while Google Maps API did?) and the interaction of end users with desktop and web-based GIS.

And the talk happened at the same day in which the excellent Third Workshop on the Usability of Geographic Information was running at the Ordnance Survey.

Usability of Geographical Information – the case of Code-Point Open

One of the surprises of the Ordnance Survey OpenData release at the beginning of April was the inclusion of the Code-Point Open dataset, which lists the location of all postcodes in England, Wales and Scotland. This was clearly a very important dataset because of the way postcode geography drives many services and activities in the UK. Before the release, the costs of using postcodes in geographical analysis were prohibitive for many small organisations.

So how usable is this free Code-Point data? The principle of ‘do not look a gift horse  in the mouth’ doesn’t apply here. The whole point of releasing the data is to make it as useful as possible to encourage innovation, so it should be made available in a way that makes it easy to reuse. I evaluated it while analysing a dataset of 11,000 volunteers’ postcodes that I received from a third sector organisation.

The download process is excellent and easy, apart from the fact that there is no clear and short description of the products in a non-technical manner next to each product. To find a description, you need to go to the product page – so you are at least 2 clicks away from the product details. It would be better to have a link from each product and include a brief description in the download page. We will see in a second why this is important…

The next step was the download itself and the opening of the zip file, which was clear and easy. There is an oddity with all Ordnance Survey data that they have a redundant sub-directory in them – so in this case the data resides under \codepo_gb\Code-Point Open\ . The fact that the files is broken up into postcode area instead of one big file of 157MB is fine, but it can be helpful to remind users that they can concatenate files using simple commands – this is especially necessary to less tech-savvy users. So an explanation for Windows users that you can open the Command window using ‘cmd.exe’ and run ‘type a.csv b.csv > common.csv’ can save some people plenty of time.

But the real unpleasant surprise was that nowhere in the downloaded package is there a description of the fields in the files! So you open the files and need to figure out what the fields are. The user manual is hides 4 clicks away from the download page and luckily I knew that the ‘user manual’ is stored under ‘technical information’ on the product page, which is not that obvious at first visit. Why not deliver the user manual with the product ?!? The Doc directory is an obvious place to store it.

The user manual reveals that there are 19 fields in the file, of which 9 (half!) are ‘not available in Code-Point Open’ – so why are they delivered? After figuring out the fields, I created a single line that can be attached to the files before importing them to a GIS:

Postcode,Positional Quality,PR Delete,TP Delete,DQ Delete,RP Delete,BP Delete,PD Delete,MP Delete,UM Delete,Easting,Northing,Country,Regional Health Authority,Health Authority,County,District,Ward,LS Delete.

Of course, all the fields with ‘Delete’ in the name mean that they should be deleted once imported.

Interestingly, once you delete these fields, the total size of Code-Point Open drops from 157MB to 91MB – which means that it can save the Ordnance Survey bandwidth and carbon emissions by making the file smaller.

Another interesting point is that the user manual includes detailed instructions on how to change the postcode to a ‘single spaced postcode’. The instructions are for Excel, Mapinfo and ArcGIS. This is the type of information that can help end-users start using the data faster. Finally, you can use this wonderful information to create lovely maps.

All these problems are minor, apart from the description of the fields which is a major usability error. Similar analysis can be carried out for any of the Ordnance Survey datasets, to ensure that they are useful to their users. There are some easy improvements, such as including the user manual with the distribution, and I’m sure that, over time, the team at the Ordnance Survey will find the time to sort these issues.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/media/news/2010/April/OpenData.html

Interacting with Geospatial Technologies – now available

Finally, after 2 years in the making, Interacting with Geospatial Technologies is out. It is the first textbook dedicated to usability and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) aspects of geographical information technologies. It covers desktop, Web and mobile applications and how they can be designed so they are more effective, efficient, error-free, easy to learn and enjoyable, which is one version of the 5 E’s of usability.      

Book cover

  

I started thinking about the book in 2004, when I realised that the most recent  academic books dedicated to HCI and GIS were published in 1993 and 1995. These are respectively David Medyckyj-Scott and Hilary Hearnshaw’s Human Factors in Geographic Information Systems  and the collection of papers from the NATO workshop Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction for Geographic Information Systems, edited by Tim Nyerges, David Mark, Robert Laurini, and Max Egenhofer.  While these books and the collections of papers in them are still valuable, it must be noted that in the early 1990s, Web-based GIS was just starting to appear, desktop GIS was fairly basic, mobile GIS was not even experimental and GIS trade journals argued about which  UNIX workstation is the best for GIS.      

Apart from these books, the proceedings of COSIT (Conference of Spatial Information Theory) are also valuable sources of academic research on spatial cognition and other principles of geographical and spatial information, and there are also many papers in academic journals about GIS.      

However, not much attention was paid to everyday use of geographical information technologies, and no textbook included an introduction in a form accessible to postgraduate students and software developers. So, after complaining in various conferences that there is a clear need for such a book, I started working on it. It was an interesting process to identify suitable authors and encourage them to contribute to the book.      

While offering the breadth of several authors who specialise in different aspects of the field, I think the textbook is coherent and consistent, and its style both accessible and readable. The editing process was more active and time-sensitive than is often the case in academic books, to ensure that the textbook is usefully up-to-date. On UCL’s MSc in GIS, a recent course based on the textbook was well received by students.      

The book covers the principles and the practical aspects of interaction with geospatial technologies. There are sections about spatial cognition, cartography, user-centred design and usability engineering – here is the table of contents.      

So, now you can get your own copy – and any feedback is welcomed.

Usability of VGI in Haiti earthquake response and the 2nd workshop on usability of geographic information

On the 23rd March 2010, UCL hosted the second workshop on usability of geographic information, organised by Jenny Harding (Ordnance Survey Research), Sarah Sharples (Nottingham), and myself. This workshop was extending the range of topics that we have covered in the first one, on which we have reported during the AGI conference last year. This time, we had about 20 participants and it was an excellent day, covering a wide range of topics – from a presentation by Martin Maguire (Loughborough) on the visualisation and communication of Climate Change data, to Johannes Schlüter (Münster) discussion on the use of XO computers with schoolchildren, to a talk by Richard Treves (Southampton) on the impact of Google Earth tours on learning. Especially interesting are the combination of sound and other senses in the work on Nick Bearman (UEA) and Paul Kelly (Queens University, Belfast).

Jenny’s introduction highlighted the different aspects of GI usability, from those that are specific to data to issues with application interfaces. The integration of data with software that creates the user experience in GIS was discussed throughout the day, and it is one of the reasons that the issue of the usability of the information itself is important in this field. The Ordnance Survey is currently running a project to explore how they can integrate usability into the design of their products – Michael Brown’s presentation discusses the development of a survey as part of this project. The integration of data and application was also central to Philip Robinson (GE Energy) presentation on the use of GI by utility field workers.

My presentation focused on some preliminary thoughts that are based on the analysis of OpenStreetMap  and Google Map communities response to the earthquake in Haiti at the beginning of 2010. The presentation discussed a set of issues that, if explored, will provide insights that are relevant beyond the specific case and that can illuminate issues that are relevant to daily production and use of geographic information. For example, the very basic metadata that was provided on portals such as GeoCommons and what users can do to evaluate fitness for use of a specific data set (See also Barbara Poore’s (USGS) discussion on the metadata crisis).

Interestingly, the day after giving this presentation I had a chance to discuss GI usability with Map Action volunteers who gave a presentation in GEO-10 . Their presentation filled in some gaps, but also reinforced the value of researching GI usability for emergency situations.

For a detailed description of the workshop and abstracts – see this site. All the presentations from the conference are available on SlideShare and my presentation is below.

ICA Commission on Use and User Issues – GISRUK workshop

The Commission on Use and User Issues of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) is currently working on a new handbook specifically addressing the application of user research methods and techniques in the area of geographical information and its applications.

In order to share experiences and interesting case studies a workshop is organized by the Commission, in collaboration with UCL, on the day preceding GISRUK 2010, Tuesday, 13th April 2010.

The programme for the workshop is now completed and the programme and abstracts for the papers that will be discussed during the meeting are available here.

For information on the commission, visit the website of the ICA Commission on Use and User Issues and to register to the workshop  follow the instructions on the GISRUK2010 website.