Usability user testing of selected web-based GIS applications

Web-based geographic information systems (WGIS) are focused on end-users who have only a very limited knowledge of GIS, if any. For this reason, WGIS applications have to be user-friendly. In the terms of a software quality, WGIS applications have to be usable. Lately, many various usability evaluation methods have been developed. Real users or their representatives are included in some of them. Other methods are based only on GIS experts' evaluation of applications. Advantage of deploying real users or at least their representatives is clear - they are able to identify some usability problems which could not be identified by experts. The problem is that usability evaluation in a real situation done by real users is quite difficult. Experimental user usability testing done by representatives of users is the next possibility. In this case, artificial environment is prepared in a laboratory and the whole experiment must be precisely conducted and controlled. In all cases usability testing method must be precisely proposed and/or adapted for the given situation and conditions. Aim of the paper is to propose a suitable experimental method based on usability user testing to identify the most serious usability problems of 14 equal WGIS applications (all applications are run by the Czech Regional Authorities and they are targeted at citizens and other end users). The proposed method is qualitative, so its main aim is to identify the most serious usability problems of the evaluated applications. The proposed method, results of testing and identified problems are described in the end of the paper.