TY - JOUR
T1 - Spatial thinking and the GIS user interface
AU - Goodchild, Michael F.
N1 - Funding Information:
The ideas expressed in this paper have benefited from discussion with numerous individuals interested in spatial thinking and GIS. I am especially grateful to Karl Grossner for his work on teachspatial.org and to the participants at a workshop in Santa Barbara in February 2011 on Formalizing GIS Functionality: Shaowen Wang, Jochen Albrecht, Naicong Li, Linna Li, Wenwen Li, Josh Bader, and Xuan Shi. The workshop was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, award OCI 1047916.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Geographic information science can be defined as the study of the fundamental issues of geographic information, and is often motivated by the need to improve geographic information technologies. One such issue concerns the design of the user interface, and the relationship between the tasks performed by the technologies on the one hand, and the concepts that humans use in thinking about those tasks on the other. Nowhere is this issue more important than in the design of GIS user interfaces and functionality. Recent efforts have led to a comprehensive understanding of the concepts of spatial thinking, and of how these concepts might form the basis for a much-improved functionality and user interface. The presentation summarizes those efforts, and points to a future in which GIS will be much easier to teach, master, and use.
AB - Geographic information science can be defined as the study of the fundamental issues of geographic information, and is often motivated by the need to improve geographic information technologies. One such issue concerns the design of the user interface, and the relationship between the tasks performed by the technologies on the one hand, and the concepts that humans use in thinking about those tasks on the other. Nowhere is this issue more important than in the design of GIS user interfaces and functionality. Recent efforts have led to a comprehensive understanding of the concepts of spatial thinking, and of how these concepts might form the basis for a much-improved functionality and user interface. The presentation summarizes those efforts, and points to a future in which GIS will be much easier to teach, master, and use.
KW - Geographic information system
KW - Spatial concepts
KW - Spatial thinking
KW - User interface
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U2 - 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.07.002
DO - 10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.07.002
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:82555184847
SN - 1877-0428
VL - 21
SP - 3
EP - 9
JO - Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
JF - Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
T2 - International Conference on Spatial Thinking and Geographic Information Sciences 2011, STGIS 2011
Y2 - 14 September 2011 through 16 September 2011
ER -