open source basecamp

At Foss4G, Claude presented how MapFish applications are hosted in Cloud Computing infrastructure. Don’t miss the video.

It’s not so common for me to blog about another blog, but Dale Lutz’s blog about simplicity is so good, that I can’t resist

This is my favourite principle: “The time required to move to a target is a function of the target size and distance to the target”.
In web mapping, it is often needed to select feature (to open a popup or present attributive information, for example). If the representation size of the feature is big, then it will be easier and faster to select it.
Another example is the size of the icons: a 16×16 icons will be more difficult to click than a 32×32.
Of course, it’s not possible to present only huge icons and huge features, but for common and repetitive operations, they should be used.
Source: “Universal Principles of Design” from Lidwell, Holden and Butler

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has published the document “Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software“.

The content of this document is particularly interesting:

There are positive aspects of OSS that should be considered when conducting market research on software for DoD use, such as:

(i) The continuous and broad peer-review enabled by publicly available source code supports software reliability and security efforts through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise go unrecognized by a more limited core development team.

(ii) The unrestricted ability to modify software source code enables the Department to respond more rapidly to changing situations, missions, and future threats.

(iii) Reliance on a particular software developer or vendor due to proprietary restrictions may be reduced by the use of OSS, which can be operated and maintained by multiple vendors, thus reducing barriers to entry and exit.

(iv) Open source licenses do not restrict who can use the software or the fields of endeavor in which the software can be used. Therefore, OSS provides a net-centric licensing model that enables rapid provisioning of both known and unanticipated users.

(v) Since OSS typically does not have a per-seat licensing cost, it can provide a cost advantage in situations where many copies of the software may be required, and can mitigate risk of cost growth due to licensing in situations where the total number of users may not be known in advance.

(vi) By sharing the responsibility for maintenance of OSS with other users, the Department can benefit by reducing the total cost of ownership for software, particularly compared with software for which the Department has sole responsibility for maintenance.

(vii) OSS is particularly suitable for rapid prototyping and experimentation, where the ability to “test drive” the software with minimal costs and administrative delays can be important.

If features are equivalent, do you still see advantage to use proprietary software ?

As you know, the page paradigm in Internet evolved to the application paradigm.
We are now building web 2.0 maping applications, with a lot of functions, a lot of capabilities and, of course, more complexity comparing to the first web maping applications.
I think that one of the key challenge for the future is to be able to propose web applications that are usable.
Maybe I should start with a definition of the term usability. Usually, five terms (see wikipedia) are associated with usability:
- Learnability: How easy it is for users to accomplish basic tasks ?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks ?
- Memorability: When users return to the design, how easily can they reetablish proficiency ?
- Errors: How many errors do users ?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design ?

I bet that we all would like that our web maping applications can receive positive answer to all these questions.
The key point is that all these questions are related to the users. So, obviously, we need to know these users. We need to know what are the users expectations, what are the users reactions, how the users perform.
During a project life-cycle, two main things can be done in order to take in account the users. Firstly, before the development phase, user centric design can be conducted in order to get the maximal number of input of the end user (not the GIS expert; the end user. I will come back in other blogs about this). And secondly, after the development phase, usability studies can be conducted in order to verify that the application meet the expectations in term of usability. I got the chance to participate to usability studies and I can only say that they are incredibly informative and valuable.
But let’s come back to the users. Of course, users are not all the same. They have different background, culture, knowledge, expertise. Let’s imagine that you develop a web mapping applications for touristic information: in this case, the diversity of users is endless. So, is it possible to create a usable web maping application for all these users ? Of course, the answer is yes, and why ? Because, some general rules can apply. My favourite reading in this domain is the book “Universal Principles of Design” from Lidwell, Holden and Butler. The sub title is very explicit: “100 ways to enhance usability. Influence perception, Increase appeal, Make better design decision and Teach through Design”.
But, how is this related to MapFish ? MapFish, as web development framework provides the brick to create User Interfaces (OpenLayers controls, GeoExt and MapFish widgets, etc…). This is probably not a bad idea to organize and use these bricks in a usable way.
I’d like now to write a serie of blogs that will present some of these principles. Stay tuned