gis

Monroe County GIS

As an interaction design intern at 39 Degrees North, I was involved in the redesigning Monroe County Web Geographic Information System (GIS). This system includes the web GIS application for general public which is available via Monroe County government website, and a suite exclusively for government employees’ professional use. This project involves user research such as contextual inquiry and interviews, conceptualizing concepts, wireframing, user evaluations, and making implementation decisions. The biggest challenge of this project is the unfamiliar problem space and the diversity of users and stakeholders such as surveyors, auditors, highway department, assessors, city planning department, and so on. It requires a decent grasp in a short time about real state knowledge, GIS, how different users use this application to complete their everyday work etc. We need to address and balance the spoken and unspoken needs of different people in the design within limited schedule.

Design Team:
Susan Coleman Morse, Nick Gentile, Yujia Zhao

Timeline:
May - Jul 2009

Resonsibilities:
research, concept development, evaluation, wireframing, UI documents

Skills & Tools:
observations, contextual inquiry, interviews, wireframing, Balsamiq, Photoshop, Illustrator, Powerpoint

Deliverables:
wireframes, UI behavior document

Challenge | Research | Initial Design | Iteration & Implementation

old GIS interface

sketches

wireframes of the highway and assessor panels

wireframes of the auditor and EMA panels

panel mockups

UI behavior illustration

main layout wireframe

final product

Challenge

Redesign the Monroe County Web GIS that meets the needs of a wide range of different users, and improve the usability and efficiency.

Research

The research includes two parts. One is collecting feedback on the existing GIS system, and the other one is understanding how each type of users do their daily work using GIS system. We went to the county government building and conducted contextual inquiry and interviews with planning department, building department, highway department, surveyors, treasurers, auditors, recorders, and assessors. We observed and learned what work they do with GIS, how they do it, what difficulties they have with the current GIS, etc. After in-field research, we debriefed research findings and insights with design team, project manager, marketing manager and development lead.

Initial Design

We sketching ideas and interfaces based on the insights we got from the research, and used Balsamiq to mock up wireframes in a quick and dirty way for internal design critique among project managers, marketing managers, and developers. Three initial alternatives evolved from this initial design phase.

Iteration & Implementation

We conducted user evaluations on the three alternatives and collected feedback for iterations. We mainly developed one design into the final design with the considerations of good parts in the other two designs. Then together with developers, project manager, and marketing manager, we prioritized features and functions according to the importance and implementation difficulties. Then we wrote interaction specifications to document detailed UI behaviors.