Evaluating User Experience of Experiential GIS

Abstract

Abstract Evaluating user‐system interaction is important to develop effective and acceptable systems. Traditionally, geospatial systems are evaluated in terms of usability with emphasis on completing application tasks and goals. This focus ignores the non‐functional aspects that separate systems with similar usability and functionality, and complete a user's experience. An alternative and holistic user experience (UX) concept that encompasses functional (e.g. usability, ergonomics, etc.) and non‐functional (e.g. aesthetics, emotions, pleasure, cognitive stimulation, etc.) dimensions was adopted to evaluate an innovative Experiential GIS (EGIS). The EGIS is an immersive geospatial system that disengages the user from the real‐world and renders the user present in 3D geovirtual scenes with real‐time sensorimotor feedback. This system was assessed in a soil mapping application involving four collaborating soil scientists. The scientists had very positive reactions, common viewpoints and occasionally varying perceptions of EGIS and the geovirtual soil mapping technique. They viewed the system as intuitive, enjoyable and capable of improving the speed and quality of soil mapping, and identified the system's strengths as including co‐experiential knowledge construction and a ‘go anywhere’ capability that enabled access to physically inaccessible and trespass prohibited areas. The scientists' views were more varied about the role of EGIS in minimizing soil mapping labor and costs.