Naive (commonsense) geography and geobrowser usability after ten years of Google Earth

9th Symposium of the International Society for Digital Earth

地球科学;计算机科学

Hamerlinck, J.D.^1

Wyoming Geographic Information Science Centre, University of Wyoming, Laramie

WY

82071, United States^1

关键词: Body of knowledge;    Commonsense knowledge;    Geographic information science;    Geospatial technology;    Research efforts;    Software implementation;    Usability testing;    Use case scenario;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/34/1/012013/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1755-1315/34/1/012013

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

In 1995, the concept of 'naive geography' was formally introduced as an area of cognitive geographic information science representing 'the body of knowledge that people have about the surrounding geographic world' and reflecting 'the way people think and reason about geographic space and time, both consciously and subconsciously'. The need to incorporate such commonsense knowledge and reasoning into design of geospatial technologies was identified but faced challenges in formalizing these relationships and processes in software implementation. Ten years later, the Google Earth geobrowser was released, marking the beginning of a new era of open access to, and application of, geographic data and information in society. Fast-forward to today, and the opportunity presents itself to take stock of twenty years of naive geography and a decade of the ubiquitous virtual globe. This paper introduces an ongoing research effort to explore the integration of naive (or commonsense) geography concepts in the Google Earth geobrowser virtual globe and their possible impact on Google Earth's usability, utility, and usefulness. A multi-phase methodology is described, combining usability reviews and usability testing with use-case scenarios involving the U.S.-Canadian Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative. Initial progress on a usability review combining cognitive walkthroughs and heuristics evaluation is presented.