NUS 4th Year Geography Honours Thesis by Tan Chia-Li

NUS 4th Year Geography Honours Thesis

The TELEMAP :
A new multimedia GIS interfacing telephone directories with electronic street maps

Overview

Current street directories and telephone directories pose several problems in terms of user accessibility. This study investigates these problems using the ontological mapping methodology. In particular, it examines how the computational medium can best be exploited to integrate related information from these two sources.

Abstract

Most Geographical Information Systems (GISs) have been built for professional users, such as environmental and town planners. Other than electronic atlases, few applications are available for the general users and the public. The proposed TeleMap will cater to these users. 'TeleMap' is an acronym for 'Telephone Directory' and 'Street Map'. It integrates information from the electronic street maps, telephone directories and Yellow Pages, using multimedia and geographic technologies. This domain of information integration offers challenging research.

The aim of this Academic Exercise is to propose a user interface for such a multimedia GIS: the TeleMap. To the best of my knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that examines the user interface design for a multimedia GIS on the basis of empirical research. Most user interfaces for displaying electronic street maps or public information kiosks are designed ad hoc. It is hoped that the use of a formal methodology called ontological mapping and empirical investigation based on survey research will result in a more systematic design process.

The focus of this study is research into the software architecture and not with the production of a prototype for commercial release. It is hoped that this study will further propel research into the development of GIS applications suitable for the general public.

This study is divided into two main parts: Part A describes the procedures and results of the empirical investigation while Part B focuses on the user interface design of the TeleMap.

The empirical investigation consists of a questionnaire survey conducted by electronic mail in Internet (attempted for the first time in this department). From the questionnaire survey, some user dissatisfaction regarding the use of the Singapore telephone directory, the Yellow Pages and the street directory is discovered. Also, there is definitely a need for integrating information from the 3 sources. The respondents provided useful comments and listed the 3 most wanted features they would like in the proposed multimedia TeleMap.

With the findings from the survey, the user interface for the TeleMap is designed using the ontological mapping, which is a framework for user interface design. Other formal methodologies employed in the research include object-oriented methodology and dynamic artifacts.

The key components of the TeleMap include a finder for a more direct way of searching information, a multimedia information window for displaying of multimedia information, and a spatial information window for displaying map information. The spatial information window includes palettes for route finding, distance measuring, and spatial zooming. Other utilities include those for taking notes, bookmarking and printing.

Many aspects of the study are grounded in Singapore context. Nevertheless, general findings from the survey and the proposed interface of the TeleMap should be applicable to other countries. The TeleMap concept will be especially useful for the implementation of electronic car navigation systems and public information kiosks.