I want to highlight one more talk from last week’s Ignite Spatial NoCo 2.0. Peter Batty of Ubisense spoke on usability testing. His key message was to make sure that you actually do usability testing. It doesn’t take long. You can look at what a user does with your site in the first few minutes and get an instant feel as to whether or not it is working as it is supposed to.
He says that the user sees something much different from what the designer sees. To explain this Batty uses the great example of an airline booking site (I think it was United) where there are three vertical panels but the user zones in on only the upper portion of the left panel – the one where you input your airports and dates.
Probably the best tip in the presentation is to not reinvent buttons and toolbars for your map. Use the standard Google-type interface since so many people are used to that. As I’m always saying though, if you strongly feel the standard solution is inadequate, make up your own solutions.
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