GeoUsers: user-centred research

What we do

A small yet essential team, GeoUsers conducts human-centred research, attempting  to understand, predict and (where appropriate) model end users’ needs, cognitive and other psychological processes and identify product usability issues. 

Our aim is basically to:

• anticipate people's future requirements for geographic information
• improve the manner in which the information is presented to the user
• apply human sciences knowledge to improving elements of Ordnance Survey’s internal processes.

People at the centre of our research may be internal to Ordnance Survey, engaged in for example data capture processes, or external to Ordnance Survey where geographic information plays a part in their professional or every day life activities.

Research outputs feed into other more technical research projects, like data capture and modelling, as well as contributing user-focused input to the work of other parts of the organisation.

Why do this research – the benefits

GeoUsers research allows us to:

• Identify future priorities for data capture and update, to meet user needs for content and quality.
• Make those data capture and update processes work  better, by building them to complement and enhance our staff's capabilities.
• Determine future user needs for geographic information content and quality, for future data modeling.
• Identify ways to improve usability of Ordnance Survey products
• Help make our data more understandable to its end-users by understanding their semantics and cognitive models.
• Move towards predictive modeling of user needs in the future, allowing us to ensure that the right information is given in the right context at the right time.
• Help Ordnance Survey to further improve its customer focus. 

Current research themes include:

User needs analyses:  Identifying current and future geographic information needs of professional users across many industries and areas of work;

Product usability: Investigating usability of current geographic  information products.

Cognitive science based research:  Applying cognitive science methods, theories and models to users of geographic information (verbal as well as on maps), to enable prediction and avoidance of user problems and to enhance our data to better match with human understandings of space and place.

Collaborative projects

For some projects within the research themes above, we collaborate with universities or other organisations.

Project Tripod (an EU Sixth Framework Programme Project) is focused on association of geographic information to digital landscape and townscape imagery, enabling users to more successfully search for images of interest.   Ordnance Survey’s input as a partner within the project is coordinated by GeoUsers.

Within the cognitive science area our Orientation work is collaborative with the University of Huddersfield (Dr David Peebles), and has also included collaborative elements with University College London and the US Air Force Research institute in Arizona.

Within the same area we are sponsoring a PhD at the University of Sussex, into the role of expertise in map use.