Copyright © the EUROPEAN COMMISSION

• Introduction
• Target
• Objectives
• Activities
• Impact and benefits
• Partnership

Introduction

The BEST-GIS project (Best Practice in Software Engineering and methodologies for developing GIS applications) has been carried out in the framework of the EU programme ESPRIT/ESSI, as an Experience/User Network. The network was promoted by the Association GISIG and within its policy to promote GIS as information technologies for territorial management, and established grouping together user, experts and suppliers of GIS technology. It was especially addressed to steps usually not sufficiently considered in their importance with respect to the work-flow of the GIS process: user interface (UI) and human computer interaction (HCI), that are very often critical issues. It is in fact important to consider the quality of use of GIS user interfaces as a key-factor for GIS use efficiency and effectiveness.

Target

The major target audience of BEST-GIS was that of GIS end-users, both technology users and domain specialists, the most interesting market to expand GIS business. The project benefits expected for the different kinds of users were:

• government and local authorities to improve productivity and deliver better quality GI
• companies to establish a work process more efficient and integrated
• professional users to have hints on GIS applications and their viability
• domain specialists to use GIS more effectively and frequently
• users to get a more precise and independent overview of GIS market
• GIS experts to understand properly user needs

Objectives

The goal of the BEST-GIS project was to produce as a concrete and practical result a reference book, "Guidelines for the Best Practice in User Interface Development for GIS", based on the experience of selected users and the contribution of key field experts. These Guidelines were produced to help users of GIS tools to achieve a good practice in using these instruments for their job and hence to achieve an added value from their systems: the focus is on recommendations about how the usability (in the wider sense) of GIS applications can be improved, since this represents a recognised, important barrier for users. The Guidelines address needs and requirements of end-user organisations and as above said the emphasis is on GIS user interface issues: the quality of user interfaces for GIS needs to improve, but it should be the end-users and not the developers who determine in which direction the improvement should go. The process can be facilitated by adopting the user-centered design (UCD) paradigm, commonly applied in several engineering fields but not very well-known in the GIS domain. At the end, the major expected benefit for the end-users is to support a process that sees them to progressively become real actors in the GIS application development process. The project partnership is convinced that the future generation of tools and methods for design and development of GIS products must include aspects of user-centred design and that through the Guidelines the Best Practice for the development of user interfaces for GIS can be fostered.

Activities

The work performed by the project partnership, whose outcome is synthetized in the guidelines, included:

• data collection by proper questionnaires
• data completion through finalised interviews
• data analysis to derive requirements
• synthesis of reference frameworks to drive future applications
• technical feasibility studies to estimate related costs
• validation activities by workshops and on-field experiments
• dissemination actions promoted by single partners and by the whole network.

The network partners were chosen for the complementary roles they can play in realising the network policy:

• GIS users, either final or developing GIS applications, can effectively contribute in needs collection and analysis and in requirement validation.
• GIS technology providers participate in tool comparison and assessment, and verify feasibility and cost of the envisaged solutions.
• GIS technology experts, including consultants and research institutions, are involved in requirement abstraction and normalisation, and in translating results into education and training initiatives.

Impact and benefits

The project relevance and impact to the participants' business is strongly related to the nature of the single partner.
Final users are made aware that their visualisation problems are shared by other organisations, that reference frameworks are given to specify interface requirements in a disciplined way, that having such frameworks in common with other bodies improves data and experience exchange.
Application developers derive know-how and identify new business opportunities, can base the design and development of geographic user interfaces on more formal and stable need representations; moreover, the software they produce presents higher re-usability potential. Technology providers make available better interface development tools, thus gaining competitive advantage; in fact, as soon as an increasing population of users adopts disciplined methods for interface definition, the technological needs to satisfy are identified with higher precision and investment can be finalised to meet them.
Finally, researchers have available a wide range of everyday experiences to study general principles and derive solutions. These benefits are not restricted to the BEST-GIS partners, but they can be extended to every organisation belonging to the above categories and interested in geographic user interface design and development, in the GI European Community and including the GISIG members. Better, a wide network audience adopting achievements of this project ensures its stronger effectiveness and success. This network audience is, from the beginning, extremely wide for the relations all network partners keep up for their institutional activities.

Partnership

The project partners are: