On the basis of the research outcomes outlined above, a final and definitive specification for the GEO label visualisation was created, which is presented in the following sections.
6.5.1 GEO Label Facets
The final GEO label should comprise 8 informational aspects, namely producer profile, producer comments, lineage information, standards compliance, quality information, user feedback, expert review, and citations information. These informational aspects should be represented via the following 8 user-accepted graphical visualisations (Table 6.12).
Table 6.12: Graphical representations and descriptions of the GEO label informational aspects.
Facet Icon Facet Description
Producer profile facet conveys availability of information about the producer of the
dataset, e.g., organisation or individual who produced the dataset, their contact information, etc.
Producer comments facet conveys availability of any informal comments about the
dataset quality as provided by the dataset producer, e.g., any identified problems, suggested use, etc.
Lineage information facet conveys availability of lineage/provenance information,
e.g., processing applied to data and number of process steps.
Standards Compliance facet conveys availability of information about dataset’s
compliance with international standards, e.g., compliance with ISO 19115, Dublin Core, etc.
Quality information facet conveys availability of formal quality measures of the
dataset, e.g., uncertainty measures recorded in UncertML, errors, accuracy information, etc.
User feedback facet conveys availability of feedback, comments and ratings
provided by the users of the dataset, e.g., general comments on dataset quality, identified problems, suggested use for the dataset, etc.
Expert reviews facet conveys availability of domain experts’ comments on dataset
quality, e.g., results of formal quality checks, expert suggestions on the dataset applications, etc.
Citations information facet conveys availability of citations where the dataset was
used and cited, e.g., formal reports on dataset quality checks, journal articles, etc.
6.5.2 Representation of Information Availability
To convey the availability of quality information for a given dataset, each informational facet can represent one of three availability states: ‘available’; ‘not available’; and ‘available only at a higher level’ (to indicate that information is not immediately available for the dataset, but is available for a parent dataset). These three information availability states should be expressed by varying the appearance of the facet icons as shown in Table 6.13.
Table 6.13: Graphical representations and descriptions of the GEO label availability states.
Facet Appearance Availability State Description
Fully filled-in background + white icon with black outline – indicates that
information is available for this dataset.
White background + white icon with black outline – indicates that
information is not available for this dataset (at any level).
Partially filled-in background + white icon with black outline – indicates that
6.5.3 GEO Label Colour Scheme
The GEO label representation should visually convey organisation, grouping, or relationships between facets. This should be achieved via the use of four different colours to indicate relationships between the facets, as outlined in Table 6.14.
Table 6.14: The GEO label colour scheme for grouping of related informational aspects.
Colour Colour HEX Colour Group Description
#ED1E7F Bright pink – indicates producer-related information (producer profile, producer comments and lineage information facets). #0F9B48 Bright green – indicates formal quality information (standards
compliance and quality information facets).
#F38020 Bright orange – indicates data user-related information (user feedback).
#4274B9 Blue – indicates formal reviews information (expert reviews and citations information facets)
6.5.4 Final GEO Label Representation
Each of the above requirements should be combined into graphical GEO label representation variants, as shown in Figure 6.40, Figure 6.41 and Figure 6.42. Some additional examples of the GEO label visualisations can be seen in Figure 6.43.
Figure 6.40: Final GEO label design (information is available).
Figure 6.41: Final GEO label design (information is available at a higher
level).
Figure 6.42: Final GEO label design (information is not available).
6.6 Study Limitations
Although once again returning rich data, and resulting in a user-led GEO label specification in which there is confidence, the Phase II studies are not without their limitations. As with both the initial investigation and Phase I study, the majority of the questionnaire-based study participants for this study phase were researchers, with over half of the respondents working for academic institutions. Consequently, the preferred function of the GEO label and its design were highly influenced by the scientific GIS community. That said, in attempts to ensure that the final GEO label addresses the needs of a wide spectrum of geospatial data users and producers, the proposed GEO label function and graphical representations were presented for discussion and feedback to a variety of stakeholders, ranging from non-expert data users to large-scale data producers. Throughout all the GEO label development stages, various GeoViQua consortium meetings, scientific conferences, and workshops were used to gather as much feedback and comments on the proposed GEO label as possible from as broad a representation of the stakeholder community as possible. It is felt that, despite the majority participation from the research domain, the results and therefore outputs of this research are representative both of a truly user-centred approach to the design of the GEO label and of the opinions and requirements of the community as a whole.
One of the main limitations of the Phase II questionnaire-based study, and therefore its associated findings, is the order in which the proposed designs were presented to the study participants; the proposed examples were presented in same sequence to all respondents (example 1, example 2 and example 3) and, as such, there was clear scope for learning to influence responses from one example to the next. The study did not adopt any counterbalancing for two main reasons: a) the online-survey software available for the research did not provide functionality to randomise the study sections; and b) based on the drop-off rate witnessed for the Phase I questionnaire (61%), it was anticipated that many respondents might leave the survey before completing all the sections, defeating attempts to achieve full counterbalancing of results even if it were possible. While it is recognised that full counterbalancing would produce more reliable results, available resources did not permit to construct a counterbalanced questionnaire. To counter the recognised effects of learning on the study results, a strong emphasis was placed on analysing textual feedback and recommendations but with an awareness of the impact of learning. As discussed in Section 6.2.5, the final results did indicate that study participants were affected by the order in which the examples were presented to them; yet, this learning effect was taken into account when designing the updated versions of the GEO label representations.
In regards to the GEO label design voting, once again it is anticipated that a large portion of votes came from the scientific GIS community. The first round of votes was collected on-site
at scientific conferences, and so the majority of respondents in that round of voting are anticipated to be from the research domain; no demographic data was collected for the online voters in order to minimise the number of questions and ensure a higher response rate and, as such, it is impossible to say which communities were represented by online voters.
6.7 Summary and Conclusions
This chapter presented the studies that were conducted as part of the second main phase of the GEO label research to solicit geospatial data producers’ and users’ views on proposed GEO label visualisations and to arrive at a final, community-supported GEO label representation. The findings of the questionnaire-based study indicated that the final user- dictated graphical GEO label representation should either be a hybrid of two of the tested prototype designs (the circular and star-based designs) or should adopt a modified version of the rectangular design, comprising the 8 informational aspects but solely conveying information availability. Due to the fact that the overall study did not show strong preference for any of the proposed GEO label visualisations, the GEO label designs were modified, adapted and improved in line with geospatial experts’ feedback and recommendations. Following the GEO label design modifications and improvements, the geospatial community was polled to arrive at a definitive user-accepted GEO label visualisation specification. The voting results indicated that the final user-defined GEO label representation should adopt a circular layout.
The following chapter of this thesis describes the implementation of a GEO label Web service developed to support use of the graphical GEO label defined in Section 6.5.