The Fundamentals of Human Factors Design for Volunteered Geographic Information

This book explores the roles in which volunteered and professional information play within neogeography from a human factors perspective. The unique advantages of each information type are considered alongside how they may be utilised to create products and services delivering highly functional, efficient and satisfying experiences to their users.

The overall aim of this book is to address the issue of how Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can be combined with Professional Geographic Information (PGI) to satisfy the information search requirements of consumer-users via highly usable mashups. Firstly, this required the development of an understanding of the way different users perceive VGI and PGI in terms of its benefits to their activities and information needs. Secondly, the benefits that VGI may bring to the user experience of a mashup (which cannot be attained through the use of PGI) needed to be understood. In order to achieve this, a user centred design perspective was implemented throughout the research.