Needs Assessment
The users outlined in the user analysis should have the opportunity to provide their specific needs on a design, through a variety of exercises including surveys, discussions, and focus groups. Each provides an opportunity for the users to provide feedback on their needs and expectations for the design.
Discussions and Focus Groups
Roundtable discussion and focus groups can involve a variety of users from the user analysis including community members, everyday citizens, geospatial analysts, and company employees, among other. The goal of the discussion and focus groups is to ask open ended questions to your users and allow them to provide open ended answers about the needs and usability requirements of your design. Overall, it can be useful for gathering detailed feedback on proposed features and functionality to ensure the UI/UX is efficient and user friendly.
Surveys:
Consider 5-10 questions in which your users can answer to provide feedback on your design. Consider general questions regarding basemaps, cartography, UI/UX features, mobile cartography and usability, user tasks, functionality for target audiences (see Schulz, 2021). It is important to understand and evaluate the usability questions before the design, to ensure that you are reaching the user goals and needs. *Note that the Schulz, 2021 articles discusses usability evaluation, but your survey should consider the user needs before the design.
- User background: Have you interacted with a geospatial design historically?
- User future: How do you think you can use this geospatial design in the future?
- Basemap Quality: What type of basemap is most accessible and preferrable for design?
- Cartography: What type of map design is most easy for interpretation?
- Target Audience: What specific features should be included for your users (consider the non-geospatial users, novice users, and expert users).
- UX/UI: What user interface needs are required for the users?
- Mobile Cartography (where applicable): Should the design be easily scalable to a mobile application? If so, what features must be considered for conversion?
- Location Based Services (where applicable): Should the app include location-based services? If so, how should they be included in the design?
- User Tasks and usability: What are some specific user tasks and usability issues and concerns that should be asked of the users?
For example, a survey of a geospatial design proposing a trail maintenance webApp could have the following survey questions, where 1 is least agree and 5 is most agree (Note* you can’t use these exact questions in your user analysis).
- Have you interacted with a geospatial design historically? Yes no
- Would you use a trail map geospatial design in the future? Yes no&
- How many times a week would you use a trail maintenance app? 1-2, 3-5, etc.
- A satellite base map is the preferred for a trail maintenance app? 1 2 3 4 5
- A dark contrast design is preferred for map cartography: 1 2 3 4 5
- Location-based services are necessary for a trail maintenance app 1 2 3 4 5