Guest Editor's Introduction: An Applied Psychology of the User
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Usability Engineering
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Web-based metadata clearinghouses and catalogs are intended to help users locate and access geospatial data that may be spread across many physical locations. Their specialized thesauri and query interfaces can be a significant help to users who are already familiar with the subject area and know specifically what they are seeking. At the same time, they can be very confusing for users who are unfamiliar with metadata and the FGDC metadata standard. Researchers at Oregon State University are developing a more "humane" approach to metadata searches, one that does not assume users know in advance how to exploit metadata in their quest to find geospatial data. One of their first projects was to review usability aspects of several large clearinghouses. Three well-known usability assessment methods were applied: predictive evaluation, a user expectations survey, and user testing. This paper describes the procedures that were used and presents the findings.