Geography Reference
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with prospective users. Furthermore, the concepts should be developed with the
consideration of established design principles, existing specifications and standards
and best-practice examples. The application concepts should be thoroughly verified
against the previously established goals and requirements. In this stage the expec-
tations and requirements of all groups involved need to be balanced and compro-
mises found between conflicting requirements and goals.
Prototype Stage
After the concepts have been developed and refined the next step involves creating
a prototype or a series of prototypes of the application. Prototype development is an
iterative process that sometimes involves several rounds of usability testing and
refinement. Prototypes can be early paper and pen sketches of the application
elements and different configurations, interactive mock-ups (e.g. interactive
PowerPoint presentations), up to very sophisticated programmed versions of the
Web-mapping application. The development team regularly needs to check the
prototypes against the established goals and requirements. Lidwell et al. ( 2003 )
advise to actively involve members of the target audience in various stages of
iterations to support testing and to verify if requirements are met. User testing with
the actual prototypes allows problems in the application concepts to be identified, as
well as actual and potential usability problems. Prototypes give the development
team the opportunity to test and redesign the prototype until the application fulfils
the goals and requirements and is error-free in almost all instances. In this stage the
testing methods which were used in the reviewed studies were heuristic evaluation,
observation,
think-aloud,
interviews,
questionnaires,
focus-groups
and
eye-tracking.
Post-Release Stage
When the latest version of a Web-mapping prototype meets application goals and
requirements to a satisfactory level and all major usability problems have been
corrected, the application can finally be released to the users. Once an application is
released, regular testing of the usability, performance and user satisfaction can help
to make sure that smaller bugs are identified and can be corrected in the released
application, and that the application stays utile and up-to-date. In this stage ques-
tionnaires administered to end users, observation (plus think-aloud), screen capture
methods, interviews, eye-tracking, and user-logging were providing good results in
the meta-analysis of user-studies. Since the Web and associated technologies are
changing at a fast pace, it is important to regularly evaluate user requirements and
goals. Major changes in user expectations and requirements give an indication
when revisions of the Web-mapping application become necessary.
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