Through development of user-friendly interfaces and wizards to assist non-traditional GIS users understand complex natural resource issues, GIS can become an inclusive tool to enhance public participation in natural resource planning. The Conservation Fund and Panda Consulting have developed the Midewin Prairie Explorer, a CD-ROM-based application built in Esri's Map Objects, to help solicit public opinion on land planning alternatives within the US Forest Service's Land and Resource Management Plan process at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Joliet, Illinois. The Midewin Prairie Explorer is being utilized to empower local stakeholders to collaborate with the US Forest Service in the creation of a consensus-based Prairie Plan.
In partnership with the US Forest Service, The Conservation Fund has actively participated in resource planning and GIS development at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Joliet, Illinois since 1995. In response to the need to actively involve local stakeholders in the planning process, The Conservation Fund and Panda Consulting developed the Midewin Prairie Explorer, a CD-ROM-based, easy-to-use data browser built in Esri's Map Objects and Microsoft Visual Basic. A unique Planning Wizard steps non-technical users through a planning question by assessing data quality, reviewing metadata, and selecting attribute and spatial queries.
The development of the Midewin Prairie Explorer application has shown that the design of user-friendly interfaces and wizards to assist non-traditional users through complicated spatial problems, in conjunction with a structured, facilitated planning process, can become an inclusive tool to enhance public participation in forest and natural resource planning. This paper provides a brief history of the Midewin planning process relevant to the design of the Midewin Prairie Explorer application as well as some of the lessons learned in designing custom GIS applications for forest and natural resource planning.
Prior to the commencement of the official planning process in mid-1998, the US Forest Service requested that The Conservation Fund and Openlands Project conduct a scoping effort to provide community stakeholder groups with a forum to articulate and build consensus regarding their priorities, concerns and ideas for the future of Midewin. The hope of this effort was that by identifying key issues and concerns early in the process, the US Forest Service could more effectively engage the community and identify critical issues that needed to be addressed before the development of planning alternatives.
In response to the US Forest Service's request, The Conservation Fund and Openlands Project convened focus groups of diverse community stakeholder groups - including economic development interests, historic preservation groups, local municipalities, regional youth service organizations, equestrians, hunters, birders and other recreational interests, cultural resource experts, researchers, and the employees of neighboring corporations – to discuss their vision for Midewin. If participants of a focus group were unfamiliar with the project, the session started with a brief slide show about Midewin and a presentation of some GIS base maps of the site to provide background for discussion. After these introductions, participants were asked what they thought was special and important about Midewin; what site experience they imagined having at Midewin; and what types of infrastructure would be needed to support their recreational interests.
The outcome of these focus groups was a summary report highlighting key issues and potential conflicts to be addressed in the formal planning process. The major finding of this scoping effort was that stakeholders held a common vision for providing visitors with a place to experience the regions pre-settlement prairie heritage and that, for the most part, potential conflict was limited to the resolution of competing recreational needs and their impact on prairie restoration efforts at Midewin. The input gathered during these focus groups provided the Midewin planning team with a solid foundation for the US Forest Service's official Notice of Intent document announcing the planning process and a framework for designing structured planning workshops that helped build consensus and identify creative solutions to potential conflict.
The MPE contains an extensively Help system and Quick Tour that is available immediately upon loading the application. In addition to standard map browser functionality (e.g. pan-zoom, identify), the MPE contains a unique Planning Wizard that steps non-technical users through a planning question by assessing data quality, reviewing metadata, and selecting attribute and spatial queries. The MPE also contains pack-and-go functionality that allows users to create and export graphics, logfiles, screen captures, annotation, and Planning Wizard results to facilitate evaluation of US Forest Service alternatives or the development of their own planning alternatives.
A prime example of the difficult programming effort in MPE is the Planning Wizard. Conceptually, the Wizard steps the user through a series of questions, develops a resultant spatial or attribute query and applies that query to the available data sets. However, in attempting the first several iterations of interface design for this wizard, we failed to connect to the basic problem of GIS tool development: cognitive friction. Cognitive friction is the reluctance or inability of users to understand or conceptualize the use of a particular function within the domain of the application. Up to this point, the MPE users would develop a conceptual model of the application's functionality through experimentation or experiential situations that in all likelihood differed from the program's model causing conflict in expected outcomes. Unless we described in detail the need for the wizard and the reason for each step, the success rate was minimal. Changing words and sequences failed to correct this problem.
Only after we threw out the original wizard structure and looked at the problem from a land use planning viewpoint were we able to understand the need to frame the problem and develop a sound, robust interface from which a beginner could develop successful queries and conceptualize how the software can and will be used in different means then originally developed. The Planning Wizard allows users to input their planning goals, followed by a review of available data and metadata, which then leads user to construct attribute and spatial queries that help answer the original planning question. While we feel the Planning Wizard facilitates the development of powerful queries for those unfamiliar with previous GIS backgrounds, a great deal of work is still required in this effort.
Another technical problem was that of operating system and computer platform. Original specifications for MPE called for the process to be platform and operating system agnostic. In reviewing the available options for integrating existing data types into a readily available programming language, however, it was determined to proceed using the Esri Map Objects and Visual Basic 6.0 programming language. This decision caused us to lock into a 32-bit version of the Windows operating system and caused untold problems with finalizing installation routines between the myriad versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Currently MPE is running on Windows 95, 1st release, Windows 95 OSR, Windows 98, 1st release, Windows 98 2nd release, and Windows NT 4.0 with service packs 4, 5, & 6. Each of these versions of the operating system presented problems directly relating to the versioning, access to and the placement of dynamic link libraries, (DLLs) and Object Components (OCXs). With increased functionality available in newer web serving applications, it is hoped that the next version will run from a web browser, require no local installation and will run from any computer platform. In order to include as many voices as possible in the planning process, we must move beyond the limitation of Microsoft's products and provide access to GIS functionality from smaller, cheaper, friendlier devices.
The MPE is but a first step to developing applications that approach problems from the users viewpoint and not the programmer or geographer's position. In the future this new approach will foster a greater acceptance of GIS technology in decision-making and see GIS become another important tool in the process of finding means to include more stakeholders in the forest and natural resource planning process.
Frank J. Conkling is the Owner and President of Panda Consulting, a firm established in 1998 in Palm Beach Gardens, FL to develop ways in which technology can be used to educate and empower individuals. During his twenty four year tenure at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Frank established himself as a true innovator in developing information systems that are user friendly, efficient and effective in sharing information across all levels of an organization. Frank, a licensed surveyor and mapper in the State of Florida since 1984, is a geographer, authorized Esri ArcView instructor, and an Esri business partner. http://www.pandaconsulting.com