User testing was completed online, via a live webpage. Testers were given the link and a series of aspects to return comments on. The webmap went through three iterations due to various updates and bugs which needed fixing before users submitted their final views. User comments are given in the table below, with information about subsequent actions taken.
| Aspect | User Number | Comment | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data | 1, 3 | Pubs missing from local canal. | No update ‐ issue with missing pubs was identified as incomplete dataset and mismatch between postcode location and physical location. Time taken to add in additional pubs would reduce time spent on functionality and performance. If pubs continue to be geolocated by postcode then size of postcode area should be considered when applying the canal buffer to avoid incorrectly excluding some canalside premises. |
| Data | 2 | Data is as expected. | No action needed. |
| Functionality | 1, 3 | When filtering results, it's not immediately clear whether that will only show results that match all of your selection criteria, or results will include everything matching just one of your selection. Also not clear if nothing is ticked, that all results will be shown. (Maybe explain in a help/ instructions box that pops up first time loading page?). | Changed checkbox formatting to more generic Unicode characters. Help box added below checkboxes to explain filter functionality. |
| Functionality | 2, 3 | Map is quite small on mobile (Samsung S7, iPhone XR). | Responsive web page design (including possible toggle button on sidebar) not implemented due to lack of time. |
| Performance | 1 | Works well on mobile internet. Not too slow to be usable. | No action needed. |
| Performance | 2 | Updates quickly (Samsung S7). | No action needed. |
| Performance | 3 | Slow to load on first try. Much quicker second time round. | No action needed. |
| Usability | 1 | Difficult to click on canal using mobile phone. | Search revealed this as a known issue with Leaflet. No update found. Attempted Makina Corpus plugin "almostOver" to work around this issue, but did not work reliably so re-wrote code to allow clicking anywhere on the map and using turf library to locate nearest point on canal. |
| Usability | 1 | Selecting canals from dropdown would be easier if grouped by canal. | This information was not available in the raw dataset, therefore time spent on other features instead. |
| Usability | 2 | Light blue ‘selected canal’ very hard to follow (colourblind tester). | Change selected canal colour to pink. |
| Usability | 3 | Clear instructions, user friendly interface | No update, spent time on other bugs instead. |
| Bug | 1 | Results table doesn't always update when clicking between pubs.Thought to be problem with wiFi signal, but also doesn't work in areas with better wiFi. | Identified the presence of multigemoetry features in the GeoJSON as cause of problem. Updated and simplified line geometry of original shapefile and re‐exported to solve issue. |
| Bug | 2 | Distance from selected canal jumps about when moving along the canal. | Identified ArcGIS export function has an outstanding bug which reverses direction of every linestring when exporting to KMZ. Corrected by flipping all lines before export. Some lengths inconsistent due to incorrect turf syntax used, corrected this. |
| Other | 1 | Would be useful to see at a glance what facilities a pub has in popup. | Additional information added into popup. |
| Other | 1 | Final map works much better. Easier to select canal, although tend to select on map, rather than dropdown. Woks well on mobile device. Format seems mobile friendly. One possible update would be to have distances in miles rather than km, or to have it as a selectable option as most boaters work in miles. | No action needed. |
| Other | 3 | Would be useful to have a child‐friendly filter option. | No action needed. |