A Usability Engineeringfor UTÖ Tourism Information System

Tourism Information System of UTÖ was developed in ARCGIS9.0 by KARToTEKTeknikutbildarna AB. This information system helps people who visit this island by providinginformation on various tourist spots, hotels, restaurants etc. This system has a menu drivenGUI (Graphical user interface) which includes a map of the island, various tools, menus andsubmenus that can be used to find information about different places in this island. Thissystem is taken care by the tourist office which can be used by tourists who want to get moreinformation about the island.Since many tourists visit this island every year it is necessary to modify UTÖ touristinformation system more user friendly. To improve UTÖ tourist information system varioususability tests were conducted with this system which was setup in a lab and test users weregiven some tasks to solve using this system. Test users were interviewed about how theysolved the tasks and also asked to give their own view to improve the system. As a touristwhat are additional features that are necessary in the system to improve the user friendliness.Currently UTÖ Tourism Information System is a standalone system which is not linked to anyweb based application. According to usability test conducted for UTÖ tourist informationsystem, the future system can be developed as follows: The system should be developed into aweb based application. So information can be accessed any where in the world.There should be some pictures in the popup information window screen and the menustructure of system has to be modified. North arrow symbol, over all view of image whichshows near by surrounding island should be added. Legend of the map should be added forbetter understanding of information conveyed by colors that are displayed in the map. Thedisplay structure of distance measurement tools needs to be changed. Proper symbols formany submenus need to be changed for better understanding of information conveyed by thesymbols.Main challenge of this usability test of TURGIS (is the name given to the GUI (Graphical userinterface) of the of UTÖ tourist information system) is this system should be modular andcapable to be used by wide range of people without any guidance of others. Usability testingis important for developing effective design of systems by which users can interacteffectively