National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

This report describes the Specialist Meeting of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) Research Initiative on "User Interfaces for Geographic Information Systems". The initiative addresses human-computer interaction methods and related issues in the design and implementation of user interfaces for GISs and other geographical software packages. The Specialist Meeting (workshop) for the initiative was held in June 1991 to set and prioritize a research agenda. The discussion concentrated on conceptual issues, and on needs for evaluation and testing. Several important themes for research were identified. Development of typologies of GIS tasks and of GIS users and use types were high priority elements of the research agenda. Spatial concepts are critical to the design of user interfaces for GIS; the issue of potential trade-offs between learnability and performance for experienced users is central; experimental testing is a critical part of the research agenda, agencies and other large organizations need guidelines on how to write product specifications for user interfaces. The paper provides details for these and other elements in the research agenda regarding "User Interfaces for Geographic Information Systems." The report also contains 35 position papers that were circulated to the participants before or during the meeting.