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.
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originally written for and publish in The UXBlog