ABSTRACT
Technological developments have provided new tools and techniques for designing interfaces and interacting with Websites. To identify the potential usability problems of Web mapping sites, four different sites were evaluated: Google Maps, MSN Maps & Directions, MapQuest, and Multimap. The experiment comprised a series of expert evaluations and user tests. During the expert evaluations, eight usability engineers and eight cartographers examined the Web mapping sites by paying attention to their features and functionality. In all, 403 usability problems were identified during the trial and were grouped according to their severity. There were several problems relating to the user interface, map visualization, and map tools. Error situations are often inevitable with map sites because users may, for example, search something that does not exist in the database. The chapter suggests some design guidelines for Web mapping sites based on the problems identified and concludes with a discussion of the findings and some conclusions.
