New Google Earth: Thoughts for educators

So the new Google Earth is out.  Frank is covering it in detail but I thought I'd do a quick post about what it means for educators.  For clarity Google Earth the program I refer to as 'GE classic' and the new version as 'GE Web'.

Why the web: I'm guessing there are several reasons for this move:
- You can use GE web on Chromebooks, key for educators in the Google ecosystem
- Enables integration with G drive so your maps will be on the web
- All sorts of other reasons for which you should Google 'advantages of the cloud'

Usability:  In making the leap from GE classic to web Google have had a long hard think about their usability of GE and I think they've come up with good solutions to old problems that were in classic.  For example:
- Content is now mainly in a tile based graphic 'Voyager' section which is sumptuous and intuitive.
- Other base map type layers, that used to be in the places column, are now much more hidden away in 'map style' (in the three lined section, top left of screen) which presents you with three main options about which layers to have showing in your base map.  You can choose more options by choosing 'custom' at the bottom.

Both these interface elements are cleverly designed to direct people to the cool content they're most likely to use (Voyager) and little used layers that used to just confuse users are hidden away (Map Style > custom).  The tile based Voyager is quick to access and easy to understand.

The GE web navigation tool (bottom right of screen) is a lot better than the classic version, its more intuitive and I especially liked the ability to see the main screen view projected onto the mini globe (as a red border) as you navigate around.

Content:  Google has gone all out with this tool to link their great content (primarily youtube and streetview) to place (the main screen).   You can create and import your old KML but Google is making it quite clear that they think that this content/place link is the main reason for using Google Earth and map creation is less important.  It's interesting to compare this approach to Esri's approach with ArcGIS Online, IMHO they have gone the other way, tools for creating your own map are the priority and curating content for users is secondary.  This is an important fact to bear in mind when using GE web in the classroom, its probably good as a tool at the top of a lesson to showcase some content but maybe you'll want students to switch to Esri or GE classic at the back end of the lesson when they create maps?

Tours?:  I have been convinced for ages that student created tours are a great tool to teach simple GIS to students.  Google Earth Tour Builder has been lagging behind Esri Story maps for a while now IMHO.  I would expect to see GETB brought into GE web at some point in the future, again, Google don't see this as a priority as it isn't in this release.

Conclusion:  As Frank points out, to get GE web operating at a similar frame rate (how smoothly it works) as GE classic is a huge job, this will have occupied most of the developers time in producing GE web.  As a result, and in common with all software making the jump from program to cloud, functionality is lost, and generally comes back with time.   However, Google have invested time in sorting out some of the usability issues with GE classic and trying to link their great content to place.  I think they've done a good job.  In educational terms they're leading ArcGIS online in terms of usability and wow factor (from the content), however, they're lagging in terms of creation and measurement tools which are still only in GE classic.

Embedding Google Expeditions in teaching

tl;dr summary  

• Interface and technology:  Excellent
• Content: Very good
• Educational design: Could do better.
• Worth investigating: Yes

Introduction

Google launched expeditions for iOS this week (announcement of release).  This is important as previously expeditions was only available for Android devices and, being made available for both of the main platforms, removes a serious hurdle for schools in using it.  In the UK, they have also promised to produce lesson plans which goes some way to answering a criticism I raised previously, that they are passive ‘Cook’s tours’ and need to be more active.  So while my dearly beloved watched some TV last night I geeked out looking at the expeditions currently available.  I concentrated on the biology models, the natural history museums and the geography expeditions.  Here are some thoughts on those expeditions:

Wow!

Just like street view before it (my post on educational ideas on how to use streetview in teaching) there is some fantastic content available for teachers to use in teaching Earth sciences.  It's totally free.  You don't even need the cardboard, you could plug a tablet into a projector to show students the content.

Slick interface and no problems combining platforms:

I experimented using two devices, one following (student), one leading (teacher).  No problems mixing iPhone, iPad and Android devices in all sorts of combinations.  The ‘show and tell’ interface worked slickly and intuitively, you can direct student's attention to where they should be looking and see where students are looking to check they're keeping up.  Nice work.

I'm told that it throws up some errors being used on schools' wifi systems.  Having your own WLAN (about £30) gets around this.

Offline:

You can download the data to the teacher's device and then from there, over a WLAN (wireless local area network, think wifi not necessarily connected to internet) it streams to all the student's devices - no need to download the same data to everyone's device.  It also means if you have the technical chops you could set up a WLAN in a study centre in the middle of nowhere without access to the internet and run expeditions with students.  I'm thinking this will also be very useful in schools with dodgy internet.

Not the right media for the Biology Models

There are a number of human biology expeditions including the heart, the skeleton etc.  I'm not convinced they work because they consist of a static, 360 degree view of a the model where you can only see one side.  With this type of media you can't see the context e.g, considering the heart:

• Where is it in relation to the lungs/ribs/diaphragm?  
• How does the heart fit in with the circulation system?

IMHO a much better media to use in this context is what I call a 'build animation': video with audio where layers of graphic information are revealed one by one.  See Khan Academy's content and compare it with the heart expedition:



One of the photospheres in the ear model expedition is particularly poor:  it shows a model of an ear from the outside.  Much better to get students to look at the real thing, and, you know what?   There are lots of great examples attached to other students' heads all around them.

Museum Expeditions - hmmmm.

I also think the museum expeditions are pushing the format too far.  A museum is intrinsically designed around a 'skim view' and 'zoom in' viewing model* - you walk around the hall looking about you generally (skimming), you then see something that interests you so you zoom in: you walk towards it and read the information at the kiosk or exhibit.  Presenting materials formatted in this way in an expedition is preventing the zooming in part - you are 'stuck' to one point on the floor without the ability to walk up to an exhibit and access the detail.  

However, when the museum is impressing us with scale, e.g. discussing the dinosaur skeleton in the Natural History museum (see image), then an expedition becomes more effective because the museum experience is all about staying at the 'zoomed out' view.

Scale in Geography Expeditions:

If there are no familiar items in view (people, houses, etc. etc.) it's impossible to tell the scale of the view: 

Any idea how big those icebergs are?  A scale comparison needs to be provided, this could be the human drone operator as a Point of Interest (POI) or providing a POI showing a 100m line.

Geography Expeditions need maps:

I also think that the Geography expeditions really need to use maps.  Combining what I call the 'avatar view' (human scale view, as in expeditions) with the map view (views from altitude setting the place in context geographically) is a very powerful narrative tool and I haven't seen any examples of this being done in the expeditions.  I'll tackle that in a separate blog post.

Teaching tool:

Google are going to publish lesson plans about how to use expeditions in teaching.  Good, but I don't think that's enough.  IMHO expeditions need to be more customisable, in effect becoming a simple content creation tool.  Teachers need to be able to easily:

- Add polls with their own questions.

- Add their own POIs - there are many teaching reasons you may want to show students a jungle in an expedition, e.g. environmental science, biology, geography or tourism.  Having only one set of POIs available per expedition is limiting.

- Add traditional PowerPoint slides between the photospheres, e.g. maps putting the location in geographical context (see 'expeditions need maps' above) or showing a zoomed in view of a dinosaur tooth with annotations in the dinosaur example discussed earlier. 

Conclusion:

Watch the journey into a glacier expedition, its done by Jamie Buchan-Dunlop (of Digital Explorer fame) and, as usual, he does it really well.  My favourite was the Mt Everest expedition, lovely example of taking students to a place that they will never probably go. 

*I'm sure there's some literature about this, do comment and let me know if there are some proper terms I should be using.

What Features should a Teaching GIS have?

Sorry for the quiet on the blog, I'm only just surfacing after a lot of marking and teaching this semester.

In this post I'm going to explore the features needed to make a simple GIS for school level education. There are a lot of new services available that are excellent opportunities for educators (e.g. ArcGIS Online and the Google family of services [review]) so I think a consideration of what features a dream edu-GIS would have is a useful thought experiment.

How would we use a Teaching GIS?

My idea would be a simple introductory GIS that would be suitable to use outside of Geography, e.g. to support a biology project looking at the spread of trees in a forest.  The tool would be simple enough that students don't really need to understand they are using GIS at all, it would just work.  To teach students about GIScience itself, rather than just using it, you'd probably want another tool.  

Working with this constraint defines the general area of functionality we want to cover, we are not thinking about GIS analysis functions (e.g. calculate how many trees are within a particular polygon), we actually need GIS just to visualise the data.  

What Features do we need in a Teaching GIS? 

So now I've defined the scope of what I'd expect my edu-GIS to achieve, we can dive in and think up some functionality lists.  I've assumed there are various features common to all GIS already inherent in my all GISs such as layer control, data importation, navigation tools.  Beyond those needs I've come up with two lists:

Must Have:

1. Usability:  This isn't a feature but is listed as IMHO it's the prime consideration.  Whatever other features are available they must be robust, easy to understand and easy to use for students. 
2. Collection via Mobile devices:  The GIS must allow users of mobile devices with GPS's to go out and collect data via customisable forms and upload the data seamlessly to a shared map.  E.g. users go out in the forest with smart phones and log locations of different tree species which then uploads to a central map.
3. Photographs:  There should be a variety of ways of easily bringing photos into the map.  In Google Earth these are screen overlay, balloon pop up and ground overlay.
4. Symbology Styling:  The major groups of symbols (points, lines, polygons) should be available and it should be possible to change the style of a symbol depending on an entered variable.  E.g. a bigger icon for trees bigger than 10m.  There should be suggested colour palettes for shading but also the ability to customise colour completely e.g. illustrate tree species with shades of green but then highlight one particular tree species using a bright orange.  
5. Attribute Table:  Related to point [4], it should be possible to access the spatial data as a table and be able to edit it, e.g. for one tree change its height from 20 to 30m within the GIS.
6. Base Maps:  It's important to have an option to chage base maps for different purposes e.g. with lots of data you want to plot it on top of a subtle map that doesn't visually complicate the view.  In other situations you may want to use satellite data imagery as your base map.  
7. Map Overlays:  Images should be possible to import as map overlays, e.g. bring in an image of an old map of London and overlay it on the existing topography.  
8. Layout Tools:  It should be possible to add titles, a legend, a scale bar and annotations to a map in a simple way to allow it to be output as a well made static map.
9. Story or Tour Tools:  There should be tools for constructing 'video' like stories with an audio narrative.
10. Export:  The raw data and styling data (data about how the map is styled such as title size) should be exportable and be possible to import into a non-cloud service such as ArcGIS or QGIS.  This allows students to backup versions as they go along, if something goes badly wrong with the cloud file they are working on in the edu-GIS then they can use an older version elsewhere.

Also Could Have:

1. Streetview:  A great bonus for education is the ability to be able to snap in and out of 'real world view'
2. 3D:  Having true 3D rendering as per Google Earth can be very powerful e.g. in looking at conditions on mount Everest but for most applications, 3D is actually not necessary.
3. Cross Section Tool:  A very useful addition in lots of applications but not core.
4. Group working:  This is natural advantage of all cloud applications.  Being able to collect data to make a map is a core function number [2] but beyond that, IMHO group working on a map is not really core unless you are in a distance learning situation.
5. Models:  Having 3D rendering of buildings can be very useful but, as with the point about 3D, it's not core.  For Geologists 3D models are much more important but I wonder if it would not just be better to build a separate program for making these sorts of models, do they have to be within a GIS?
6. Historical Imagery:  A great resource for an edu-GIS but the patchiness of good data limits its use much as the fact that streetview is mostly consigned to public roads at the moment.  
7. Time animation Features:  Very powerful but on the edge of what is possible within a school teaching situation, its quite abstract to get students to put these together.
8. KML:  To explain this point I'll consider the Google Earth situation:  for power users, it is endlessly useful to be able to access the code that controls the data itself (KML) and manipulate it outside of Google Earth to go beyond the core functionaility.  For example, I have spreadsheets that I can use to produce KML outside of Google Earth and import it in, for example, creating custom Google Earth tour flight paths and speeds.  This extends the power of the GIS beyond the functions that are built in.

This is a quick, from the hip, set of thoughts.  It would be interesting to hear what other's agreed/disagreed with on my lists.

Usability testing and Problems with Questionnaires

I came across this interesting presentation from Patrick Weber and Catherine Jones (amended to name both authors 11 August) at SOTM eu. He discusses usability issues with Open Street Maps editor using eye tracking and usability techniques. I only got the video to work by downloading it, the player didn't work.

Map Usability: What's great about this is that its a discussion about the usability of maps in the public sphere not a secret report for some company. IMHO there is a great need for much more of this work, we're woefully unaware of how to make interactive maps usable. It has lots in common with a current MSc project I'm supervising that I discussed last week looking at placemark clustering.

Simple Testing: Patrick discusses results from videoing users and eye tracking. These tools definitely help analyse and communicate the issues that arise from testing but you can still find out a lot without these tools via a technique is called Hallway testing (talk aloud procedure). It takes about half a day and needs no eye tracking or video recording.

Testing 'Doing' not Gathering Opinions: Hallway testing is pretty quick given the amount of information you get from them but its quicker still to gather feedback by questionnaires. Questionnaire feedback gives you some useful insights into your map system but it is by no way a complete picture. This was bought home to me this week in a reference I found about users searching for targets in overview* maps. The experiment tested search tasks with and without an overview map. Users were very positive about the value of overview maps but when the speed and accuracy of the searching were analysed using the overview it turned out that their performance didn't improve. Questionnaire data can be misleading, to really find out the truth you have to observe (and measure if you can) users trying to complete tasks with you map based tool.

*An overview is a small map in the corner of a web page showing the view from a higher altitude and usually marking the current view.

Google IO talk on Maps Usability

I was interested to watch the Google IO video above of Designing Maps Applications for Usability on Mobile and Desktop by Luke Mahé, Jez Fletcher, Justin O'Beirne as a while back I had a go at presenting my own map design ideas to developers. The other week I said I've stopped critically reviewing other people's projects but when Googlers stand up and present about map usability I think some critical discussion is deserved. Here's some thoughts in note form:

Stuff I liked:

• Mobile vs Desktop: I don't do much with mobile maps so it was interesting to have the differences between mobile and desktop discussed, I liked the idea that users on the desktop are 'planning'
  
• Rendering Speed: Fast response is an integral part of the UX (user experience), I haven't really thought about this before except for very slow rendering maps so the discussion at 21 mins in was useful.
• Emphasising: Justin's points about how to use the GMaps API to demphasise uneeded map elements (30mins onwards) were smart and well made. I liked his examples of both good and bad maps.
• White roads for routes I especially liked Justin's point about making roads white for route focussed maps (36 mins), he's right that it emphasises the route well.

Stuff I didn't:

• Placemark Clustering: At 14.29 Jez and Luke promote the idea that a placemark clustering visualisation is better than not clustering points. Strictly they're correct as it is a way of tackling the 'too many points' problem but I think placemark clustering is flawed and not as good as other techniques. It should be said that this is my opinion - it may be that the clustering they show is actually a very effective technique, the proof would be a user test (which I will have a student looking at later this summer). My point is you shouldn't promote an unproven technique.
• Walk the Walk: It would have been good if the heat map Jez and Luke presented at at 14.58 had heeded Justin's smart advice and faded the background so the mix of colors stood out. To be fair, I guess it wouldn't have been straight forward to do this as it was a fusion tables map visualisation rather than a straight instance of the maps API but it can't be that difficult.
  
• Missing Topics: So they covered a lot of topics but there's a of UX things that IMHO are relevant to developers that I discussed but which failed to get a mention: Layer control, Icon design (although they did point out that you should choose useful icons rather than just use the default markers), use of color, balloon design, map copy/micro-copy and introductions.

Gapminder and GA Conference 2011

So at the GA Conference last weekend the most interesting thing for me was Hans Rosling and Gapminder. Hans's talk was excellent, as he was addressing a set of Geography teachers he went into more depth about some map design characteristics of the Gapminder World. If you haven't come across it I recommend you give it 4.5 minutes of your time by watching this video

Thematic Maps: Gapminder started out visualising the data with a standard thematic map of the world which they colored to show changing variables like rise in GDP. Hans said they soon rejected that as countries with big areas such as Australia dominate the view visually. That's a clever insight IMHO.

Map with Symbols: So they tried circle symbols and varied their sizes. This was better but a change in size isn't as visually arresting as movement. Hans's smart phrase was : 'movement has a direct highway to the brain'. So they ended up with their famous graph visualisation and a map tab you can click to see a map presentation. I think the key point about the data presentation is that country location isn't that important, all you really need to know is which continent a country is in. This means the map can be ditched in favour of a graph plot which brings with it the advantages of movement and the ability to draw tracks.

I couldn't help thinking that Hans the statistician seems to know more about good graphical and map design than a lot of GeoWeb developers and GIS specialists I know.

Happy Easter Break!

Streetview now Captured by Tours

I was away when GEarth v6 was released but I was excited to see the pegman make it into GEarth bringing the smooth usability of streetview in GMaps into GEarth.

Others have documented the feature well but no one in the blogosphere appears to have noticed (and isn't mentioned in the above clip) that you can now record streetview in tours too: tour of the walk from Waterloo Station to the London Eye. All you do is;

1. record a tour in the normal way,
2. drag and drop the pegman (orange man icon on the main screen controls) half way through to enter streetview
3. navigate around in streetview
4. click 'Exit Street View' button top left of your screen to exit street view
5. stop the tour.

to quote a famous meerkat: 'simples'

This has a ton of applications:

• What better way to direct your friends to the pub?
• Real estate (relators in US speak) adverts showing the town amenities close to their property
• Teaching human geography

Well done Google, a smart feature all round.

Techy KML Details: GEarth 6 has spawned a new gx KML element: "gx:ViewerOptions", this element inserted into a FlyTo parent with"gx:option name="streetview"" tells GEarth to changes from normal to Streeview in the middle of a tour. ViewerOptions also allows historical imagery and sunlight conditions to be captured as well.

Timelines and Tours outside Google Earth

I've come across a couple of examples of GEarth features implemented elsewhere which were worth a mention:

Timeline Example: I thought this timeline from a New York Times graphic is much better than the timeline in Google Earth:

• Easier to grab and move the jaws, in GEarth the jaws are too small
• The play button only allows the jaws to move together, in GEarth you can press play and the far side of the jaws will move which is too complex for users to understand and utilise IMHO
• The time labels are simple and clear whereas in GEarth the labels are more fussy
• The blue shading communicates 'this is the time range' in a clear way and its semi transparent so you can see the graph below it.

The GEarth timeline remains high on my list of things Google should really fix in GEarth.

Tour Example: I think the tour feature of GEarth is one of its strongest features allowing user in presentations or promotional film clips. I came across a film sequence in a TED talk which has a form remarkably like a tour:

(BTW the clip is fascinating and well worth watching in full)

The clip 'zooms' down from large to small scale and at the destination scale the camera moves around a 3D object which is then manipulated in various ways to illustrate the relationships of neurons. Compare it with this GEarth tour:

The building clip has a poor frame rate and the building isn't manipulated in some way (like showing the inside rooms) but otherwise, the format is exactly the same. I'm in the middle of researching to best design tours at the moment and the Seung clip is a lovely illustration of how the results of my studies will not just apply to GEarth and other Virtual Globes but to any 3D visualisation system where zooming across scales in a film clip is important.

With the Seung clip I defined where it should start, see how to get a YouTube video to start where you want it.

3D Geology Models

I'm in Norfolk, Virginia working with Declan de Paor and team at Old Dominion University this week. I've already had a fascinating time looking at their latest work (see an old post for more details of the type of thing Declan does). An example is a model of the earth below Iceland, screen shot below.

Source files here

The great thing about this project is that unlike most TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) projects I've been involved in, the team here have a lot of technical examples working already and we're just starting! A lot of TEL projects start with a teaching idea without knowing how to produce it technically which means that little or no time is left to find out if the learning technology works as the team's time is absorbed in solving technical problems. So I think this project is really going to produce some excellent materials and push forward the use of Google Earth in education.

Google Earth API Use: One thing Declan's team are doing that I think is really clever is that they're using the GEarth API to reduce complication. Instead of having lots of controls like the compass control and layers panel in the GEarth client, they use the GEarth API showing only the controls that they need which simplifies the tool for students. Unfortunately they haven't published any examples yet but I'll point them out when they appear.

Data.gov GEO Viewer Fail

Via James Fee I picked up on the new Data.gov GEO Viewer. I couldn't get it to work either. Marten Hogweg reviews it and it's worth reading the comments: webotter picks out problems with the UI of the viewer.

12 Neo-Cartographic Tips for Developers

After releasing the Google Maps API styling features Googler Mano Marks commented:

"The truth is, we're mostly engineers, not cartographers. I'd love to see some great guides to how to style your map. Anyone want to give it a go?"

So here are my 12 best neo-cartographic tips:

Tips 1 to 6 (9.30)

Tips 7 to 12 (6.10)

Links out: There are various links out and other text and relationships shown in the clip, to access them you can navigate in the Prezi pane:

Cartography for NeoGeo Developers on Prezi

Other Notes:

• Not Just Cartography: Mano's request was asking about the new style features. Actually only 2 of the tips [5 and 6] relate to the new feature because IMHO a holistic approach to map design is necessary so you have to consider usability, graphic design and interactivity as well.
• Not Just for Developers: I aimed the material at developers but its a good introduction to design for anyone thinking of putting an interactive map together because I don't use any jargon.
• Discussion of Styling: My post discussing the lack of cartographic advice that went with the styling feature release. Ed Parson's post is also relevant.

Global Warming Map from Foreign Office

This GEarth layer and GEarth plugin has been released this week by the foriegn office showing the effects of 4 deg C rise in tempearature on the world. Great topic but poor science communication IMHO. For example, in an earlier incarnation it was a map (click the screen shot to be taken to the map):

In this form you could click layers on and off at the bottom and see all the countries in the world at once. In the GEarth plugin version, countries are obscured by the curvature of the earth and there's no layer control so you're left with a cluttered mess of circles and ovals all on screen at the same time.

I'm going to review it more fully next week when I have more time, there are a number of other interesting design features to the project.

Google Earth 5.2 Thoughts

Sorry for lack of posts last week, my family is over from New Zealand so I took some time out.

GE 5.2 has already been reviewed well by Mickey and Stephan, I share their enthusiasm for the tracks, elevantion and slide in browser functionality. I've noticed some other features in the 5.2 Pro version (not sure if they're in the normal version) that IMHO deserve comment:

Table: (Tools > Table) This gives you a table view of the KML that you've selected in the places column so you can see the text in the description boxes of a number of placemarks at once, its similar in functionality to Northgates KML editor. Table isn't documented anywhere I can find and I was disappointed to find its read only, it really would be useful if you could use it to write to KML directly as per GIS tools and the Northgates tool.

GE gives you the ability to produce KML within the editor already but I'd love to see functionality where I could put time tags into KML without having to copy raw KML out to a text file.

Regionate: This is documented to a degree but it didn't tell me exactly what this functionaility does, e.g. it doesn't chop up paths into smaller segments. Maybe it only deals with placemarks?

I was also excited to see a contextual help button in the dialogue box. Contextual help in GE is something I've advocated before so I was disappointed to find its only in the Regionate and flight simulator dialogue box (given a cursory hunt around). Why not link to help files from all dialogue boxes?

Slide in Browser: Stephan makes a nice point about the slide in browser, I agree with him that maintaining the option of the split screen would be good. However, I think that the sliding browser screen would be excellent for using GE in presentations, set up a tour, fly into an area in GE then pan across a presentation slide in a browser from the web, use that to support your talk for a while then return to GE to continue the tour. I think Google should think about linking the Google Docs presentation tool with Google Earth in this way, I played around with the idea but currently:

• It takes 2 clicks to open a presentation (open balloon, select link)
• Opening a GDocs presentation in the GE browser currently crashes GE pro!

Polygons and Ruler: I was pleased to see that the polygon bug has been fixed, that was a real pain. Being able to save paths produced with the ruler tool is also smart.

GEarth Tours: Power first, Usability second

The most interesting thing I learnt last week at AGU was about the strategy Google adopted with tours. The Googler who built tours told me they were aiming for power in the first release rather than making them very usable. That explains the current situation where you can easily create a simple tour (my tutorial) , where complex tours which control the timeline and animate objects are possible (see latest Google Tour below)

but where producing such involved tours is very complicated because you have to write KML code directly. I suspect this means that Google are going to work on making tours much more user friendly in the future, as per the positive characteristics I noted about ArcGIS Explorer (AGX).

In my experience people get very excited about the possibilities of technology in teaching and often the benefits aren't realised because teachers are over optimistic about the difficulties and what can be achieved but I predict students will love producing complex presentations based on GEarth tours, it's going to be great.

AGU, Tutorial Use and Harrower on Icons

I'm just about to come home from the AGU conference. Its been really worthwhile making the trip, a lot of people I bumped into were complimentary about this blog which is good to hear as blogging is quite a solitary experience a lot of the time. An unexpectedly high number of people have also been complimentary about my tutorials (includes links to older tutorials) and said they use them with their students. That's also really exciting to hear and gives me pause for thought about what else to publish in the future.

I have lots of thoughts, links and ideas the conference which will go into blog posts in the near future, however a gem of a link was given to me by Andrew Turner; Cartography 2.0 is an online text book about developing interactive maps by Mark Harrower. I've just had a quick first read about user interfaces (UIs) and it's well worth devoting 10 minutes to. Most people developing maps won't be building UIs which is a fair bit of the discussion but his comments on icon design and his respect for 'Don't make me think!' by Krug are spot on.

Google Maps: Deteriorating Interface?

Muki Hacklay ruminates on Google Maps and Earth interfaces. He has a number of good points, firstly the quality of the original interface:

"In terms of usability, the slippy map increased the affordability of the map with direct manipulation functionality for panning, clear zoom operating through predefined scales, the use of as much screen assets for the map as possible, and the iconic and simple search box at the top. Though the search wasn’t perfect (see the post about the British Museum test), overall it offered a huge improvement in usability. It is not surprising that it became the most popular web mapping site and the principles of the slippy map are the de facto standard for web mapping interaction. "

He then goes on to note a pet hate about street view:

"However, in recent months I couldn’t avoid noticing that the quality of the interface has deteriorated. In an effort to cram more and more functionality (such as the visualisation of the terrain, pictures, or StreetView), ease of use has been scarificed. For example, StreetView uses the icon of a person on top of the zoom scale, which the user is supposed to drag and drop on the map. It is the only such object on the interface, and appears on the zoom scale regardless of whether it is relevant or available. When you see the whole of the UK for example, you are surely not interested in StreetView, and if you are zooming to a place that wasn’t surveyed, the icon greys out after a while. There is some blue tinge to indicate where there is some coverage, but the whole interaction with it is very confusing. It’s not difficult to learn, though."

I see what he's driving at but I don't really share his dislike of this feature. Sure, its an oddity but its immediately obvious how to work the functionality. I'm also happy with seeing it at all scales - sometimes I want a high level view of where streetview is available to know if I can use it in an area. On the topic of too much functionality I also wonder if the public now is so used to the basic controls (zoom, pan, slippy map, search) that it isn't much of an issue adding more functionality? Of course, it does add to screen clutter. One feature of GMaps I really don't like is the little circle above peg mans head. What does that do? Why is it there?

Muki then goes on to discuss Google Earth interface:

"There are similar issues with Google Earth – compare versions 4 and 5 in terms of ease of use for novice users, and my guess is that most of them will find 4 easier to use. The navigation both above the surface and at surface level is anything but intuitive in version 5. While in version 4 it was clear how to tilt the map, this is not the case in 5."

Here I totally agree with him. The controls in GE5 are complex and behave in odd ways. I bypass them completely when teaching about GEarth and teach people the mouse controls (Click and drag to pan, click mouse wheel and drag to rotate around a location and alter tilt, roll mouse wheel to zoom in and out). GE4 controls were much better.

On a related topic, I've talked about the usability of the layers panel in GE before

I share Muki's wish that Google don't lose sight of the value of simplicity, functionality is good but a complex interface can be unusable.

Google Earth Layers

Interesting comment from Frank on Google Earth Blog:

"One of the weakest areas of Google Earth is its layer interface. Mostly due to the fact that it is not easy to find layers without opening lots of folders. If Google would just add "search" to the layers pane things would get much better. An option to memorize certain favorite layer sets would be another improvement. There's so much information available in the layers, but my perception is that few people discover whats hidden there."

Couldn't agree more.

I also worry that even when someone opens a layer, they may not realise that they have to fly down before anything will appear. I discuss this properly here.

Inset Maps

GEarth has an option for an overview map (ctrl M or Options > Overview Map) but it shows your location on a world scale and doesn't show direction of view.

Google Maps Inset Map with Man and Arrow Icon

In Streetview on Google Maps the equivalent is a lot more sophisticated with a person icon and an arrow showing direction. In a GEarth tour it is good practice to show users a similar inset map with a more relevant smaller scale as it helps them understand where they are and which direction they are facing. I've produced a tour to illustrate how to do this using Screen Overlays, click the image below to be taken to the tour (GEarth Plugin needed):

The tour shows you various views and I turn the inset map (a screen overlay I created using a graphics package) on and off in the tour to show how it could work. Note that as best practice I usually align my view northwards in a tour unless there's a good reason to do otherwise. If you changed viewing direction in a tour the inset map would be more useful.

Of course, it would be a lot better if the inset map was programmed so location and view direction changed in real time as in street view rather than being static images, this would be a nice feature to see in GEarth.

Graphical Editor for Google Earth Tours

So I've been experimenting with tours a lot recently and have found it easy to produce tours with lots of flights and placemarks that open and close but more difficult when you're trying to sync audio with the tour. Partly this is because of a bug but also because I'm frustrated with the need to hand code rather than use a graphical editor. GEarth itself allows you to produce tours without coding but you can't use it to tweak a tour e.g. change a section of the audio.

I think there is a widspread need for a tour editor that operates like Captivate:


How Captivate Works: As you can see from the screenshot Captivate works on a slide metaphor for producing video tutorials of software. Audio, annotations and text call outs within each slide can be sequenced and controlled in terms layering (what element lies on top of what) by manipulating the time line control (top right). The result of your edits is viewable in the screen view in captivate (bottom right). Slides represent a section of the tutorial (left column).

Suggestion for a GEarth Tour Editor: For GEarth tour this could all be produced within a web page that uses the GE plugin, a slide would represent a section of the tour. The plugin view would replace the main screen and editing the timeline would sequence the audio, control elements being turned on and off and control the camera flight.

LazyWeb Request: If anyone knows of something like this/is building it already, I'm all ears.

Uk Street View Launched, Regions Functionality

Via Frank at Google Earth Blog I am excited to see Street View for the UK launched. He also has the story on how user photos have now been incorporated in Google Maps. I agree with him that the way photos have been geotagged and sorted for viewing angle is excellent. You have to hand it to Google, this is a great implementation. What photos in streeview represent is complex but the interface is slick and well designed so you can just dive in and make it work.

Street View in GEarth: Its been blogged elsewhere but I think its worth mentioning again: Moving to Google Earth, click the street view layer and you are offered panoramic views around the UK. Want to put a view on your website? Simply click the panorma and you are offered an option to view in Google Maps or embed in your website. Choose 'embed' copy the code offered and voila, an impressive offering as below.


View Larger Map

Itchen bridge view: Two things to note about this view:

• I use Southampton as a case study in what will happen if the Greenland icecap melts with students at Southampton University. Most of what you see around the bridge will be flooded if the icecap melts.
• The blanked out sign you can see on the side (blanked out by Google by the way) tells people they can phone the Samaritans on the phone (in the blue box) if they are considering committing suicide. Last time I drove over this bridge someone was being talked down from a suicide attempt.
  

Regions Functionality: Its becoming one of my pet topics (previous post) but there is an interesting difference between how GEarth and GMaps inform you that there is Streeview content in an area.

Comparison of how streetview content is marked by GEarth (left) and GMaps (right) in Southampton.

The image on the left shows, GEarth photo placemarks around Southampton. As with other content, the regions functionality is used to keep the screen clear, zoom in and more photo placemarks will appear you can view. On the right is the view of Southampton in GMaps if you pick the orange man icon up and begin dragging him (I've highlighted him in orange). Polygon data shows exactly where there is streetview content on the ground. The GMaps technique is more intuiative and its easier to see exactly where the content lies.