Usability of NPS Maps

The National Park Service (NPS) has a beautiful new face for the web and its 100th Anniversary. It follows the typical web page design that everyone is copying these days, and is definitely much more user-friendly. Information is more readily available, and Search box and Main Menu are at the top and easily identified. Selecting a State provides a listing of all of the Parks in that state, and an awesome new map of the National Parks in that State, with detail for surrounding States available also.

The new map really is the best part of the new site, but it is lacking on a few points I perceive attributable to something endemic with GIS these days. Folks generally know their data very well, but do not understand much about the intended use, or they just do not understand how most folks use maps. Below are a few things I would really like to see added/changed to increase usability for the NPS maps.

Before the NPS site launched with new maps, I created a web map for National Parks to address functionality missing within the maps on their old web site, much of which remains absent in the new maps. I collected data available from NPS into Google My Maps to meet my primary needs, which include the ability to understand the general spatial relationship between the parks, calculate driving times, and discover what others might be near my route, or where the Park I will be visiting. Google has a few thing to answer for too, but I will get to that another time.

National Map is Missing

Forcing users to narrow their search by State is somewhat helpful, but falls short of usability for those of us planning road trips. It would be much more useful to have access to a map of the entire nation.

State Switching is Awkward

With a State selected, there is no simple means of switching to another State. Users must return to the Home page or understand breadcrumbs enough to click the “Find a Park” to return to select another State. There are too many steps here; perhaps a drop-down is in order. I am quite sure this is causing the page to make entirely too many service calls too.

Scroll-Wheel Zoom Unavailable

Requiring users to click “+/-“ icons for zoom in/out is awkward at best, and not exactly 508 compliant. Every online map that is worth anything permits mouse scroll-wheel zooming. Nobody wants to click any more than necessary.

Inconsistent Labeling

Clicking a Park name on the map, within the State selected, provides more information and a link to the web page associated with the Park. However, if you click a Park in another State, only the Park name displays; clicking that name takes you away to the page associated with that Park. The map should display information consistently, regardless of the State selected.

Surprise Features

Viewing Missouri and attempting to click Harry S Truman NHS presents a label for “Santa Fe National Historic Trail.” It was not immediately obvious that there was an unlabeled feature present on the map. Presenting irrelevant information to the task is not very helpful. A better experience would be to display information only for labels visible and clicked.

Mini-Map with Listing

In the listing of Parks, a static mini-map of the State where the Park is located, with a star on the location of the Park in that State would be more useful than the thumbnail picture currently displayed. As it is now, one has to scroll up and down the screen to match name to location, and not all locations are display labels on the map.

Get Directions

For Road Trippers, this is an undeniable and absolutely must-have feature. We want to know all of the National Parks along our planned route. We are planning trips from one State to another.

Unable to turn layers on/off

Multiple layers of geographic data exist within this map; primarily, Parks and Trails. Thinking about the “Surprise Features” note above, it would be helpful to be able to turn some features off, when too many converge on the same location.

Missing North Arrow

A required cartographic element for all maps recently delegated to the trash can in favor of saving space, this should never be absent from any real map.

Missing Legend

I can get past the lack of a North arrow, but the lack of Legend, when there are multiple features delineated in various colors is inexcusable. What do those colors mean? Are they simply to differentiate between the trails? What if I were color-blind?

Missing Scale Bar

This is up there with the missing Legend. Users need to be able to understand the spatial representation in front of them, and generally calculate distance between features on the map.

Missing Map Search

A search function exists for the site, but what if a user only wants to search a Park name on the map.

. . .

originally written for and publish in The UXBlog

Avery Surrounded

In watching the Netflix series “Making a Murderer,” I became intrigued with the idea that perhaps there was something about the land owned by the Avery family, causing all of their headaches. This evening I set about putting a little bit of a parcel map together and was surprised to discover that the land owned by the Avery family could definitely be a source of contention with his neighbors; the primary one of which appears to a sand and gravel company.

Indeed, Badgerland Aggregates, LLC owns nearly every parcel of land surrounding Avery’s Auto Salvage. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but there could very well be some sort of relationship there, and an effort to finish assembling the land in that area for their ongoing mining operations. After all, sand has become quite the commodity in the last bunch of years.

I drew the parcels in by hand, based on names data displayed through the Manitowoc County Advanced Access GIS Viewer. As GIS viewers go, it is terrible for this sort of an effort, and not user friendly at all. It took several hours to complete the effort, and in the end, I kicked myself for not having added the parcel number as well. It might be interesting to know the property values associated with these parcels, just in case there is some sort of discrepancy.

After going back and adding the parcel numbers to the table, I went through tax roll information on the Manitowoc County Property Tax Records Search web site. On the surface, it does appear that the land value for Avery family is over-assessed. In contrast, Badgerland Aggregates land assessed much lower, in spite of the fact that they are harvesting one particular commodity at a rather furious rate. I suppose that is not particularly shocking, but definitely of interest, and bears closer examination by someone more qualified.

I finally took to the web to discover more about Badgerland Aggregates, and quickly found out that I was not the only one that had this suspicion.

Coincidentally (as if this situation didn’t have enough already), Badgerland Aggregates has a very close relationship with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, one individual of which just happens to have been a mentor for the District Attorney.

Of course, this is all coincidence… if you believe in that many occurring around one particular person, but it is interesting, nonetheless. Feel free to have a look at the data assembled below.

Conscientious Stupidity

I heard a continuation of a very disappointing trend in the upcoming Presidential election on NPR this morning…

“I’m a woman. She’s a woman.”

Apparently, there are quite a few folks supporting Hillary Clinton for no other reason. I have heard this sort of commentary numerous times in interviews and other situations and it is most unsettling. The United States witnessed this this very same mentality during the election of Barack Obama in 2004. I remain genuinely surprised that nobody has noticed the sexist and racist undertones of these sort of comments, or everyone is too afraid to say anything.

Casting your vote in favor of someone should have nothing to do with the sex or race of an individual. It should have everything to do with their policies and beliefs. I cannot imagine casting my vote for someone solely based on physical traits. There is serious danger in this sort of thinking.

Road Comparison in GIS Services

At the request of the GIS group in DC, under the direction and in response to GIS-440, IPUSO created a Roads data layer and associated service for use by the [US Government Agency] in GIS applications. The data is a derivative product of US Census Tigerline data. Along with the associated service, the data will require continuous maintenance, necessitating perpetual funding of technical and business resources. Simply stated, this will have a huge cost impact to ongoing operations and maintenance of GIS systems and services for the [US Government Agency].

In contrast, an alternative solution recommended by [US Government Agency] GIS Subject Matter Experts is available, which holds no associated cost. It is available through the existing contractual arrangement with GIS vendor ESRI, developed and maintained by experts in Street and Road data, and based on US Census Tigerline data. ESRI established the data and associated service under strict usability guidelines, are highly scalable and configurable, and free for use under the existing maintenance contract.

Supporting this recommendation, OCIO mandates along with other architectural guidance from GISO, and CTS OCE Program Team indicate authoritative data and existing configurable cloud services need to be investigated and leveraged prior to development of custom or duplicated solutions for GIS within the [US Government Agency].

The following pages compare and contrast the services primarily from a usability standpoint.

The [US Government Agency] service is not Tiled or Cached, and consequently sluggish. It also lacks appropriate scaling, labeling, and configuration to meet the needs of an enterprise GIS Data. In short, the service and data are mostly incomplete, incoherent, unusable, and already in need of updating.

The ESRI layer is tiled, cached, and serves up fast and with minimal calls to the server. The service is complete, coherent, usable, and requires no updating by [US Government Agency] employees or contractors.

Note about the review platform

An inability to review the  [US Government Agency] service through ESRI ArcMap necessitated review of data services within ArcGISOnline, using a light gray canvas base map to ensure data displayed clearly as intended. Note that the light gray canvas includes roads outlined in white paths, and contain minimal labeling, as shown in the example immediately below; otherwise, roads do not appear, except as designed in the layer.

Entire US View

[US Government Agency] displays no roads at all

[US Government Agency] displays no roads at all

ESRI Layer displays major interstates with orange lines only

Regional View

[US Government Agency] layers shows no roads

ESRI layer shows interstates in orange, along with appropriate and universally understood labeling.

State-level View

[US Government Agency] shows no roads

ESRI layer shows interstates in orange with appropriate and universally understood labeling, along with major highways, also labeled and shown in light orange.

City-level View

[US Government Agency] layer shows red lines for interstates, but no labeling.  Roads also appear disconnected and incomplete.

ESRI layer shows all major roads, highways, and interstates.  Labeling is mostly clear and consistent with understood cartographic design, scaling appropriately.

City-zoom View

[US Government Agency] layers displays hard black lines for all roads, which are not labeled, and red lines for interstates, with incorrect label formatting.

ESRI layer shows all major roads and thoroughfares, interstates, and highways, as well as water-crossing routes; labeling is consistent, readable, and scales appropriately.

City Neighborhood View

[US Government Agency] layer displays hard black lines for roads and hard black typography for road names. It is easy to read on a Gray Canvas background, but impossible to read when overlaying aerial imagery.

ESRI layer at this scale reverts to labeling only, relying upon existing features on the ground. Labeling is only slightly difficult to read on a Light Gray canvas, but easily read when overlaying aerial imagery.

City Neighborhood View with Aerial Imagery

[US Government Agency] showing as indistinguishable overlying imagery

ESRI layer showing readability overlying imagery

Step Scale of [US Government Agency] over imagery, beginning with the entire United States

For the [US Government Agency] Service there is no means of visually identifying road location at any of the following scales.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, a single red line appears requiring further identification of the feature to determine that it is part of the US Interstate system.

For the [US Government Agency] Service there is no means of visually identifying road location at the following scale.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear, requiring further identification of the features to determine that they represent specific roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear along with simple black labeling identifying the roads.

At the following scale, within the [US Government Agency] Service, hard black lines appear along with simple black labeling identifying the roads.

Step Scale of ESRI Service over imagery, beginning with the entire United States

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear without labeling at the following scale.

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear without labeling at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, major interstates appear with labeling at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, all interstates appear with labeling, along with major US highways and their labels, as well as major roadways also labeled, at this scale.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.

For the ESRI Service, interstates, highways and roads are not represented by lines, but display labeling instead.