Ye Olde Cognitive Walktrough Exercise.

Now here’s something that’s been a-long-time-a-coming, the ever elusive Cognitive Walktrough exercise I was supposed to do months ago.

Here goes:

My task is to find a friend in Oulu. I have his street address (Makelininkatu 39) but I’m not familiar with the city. Oh, and I’m British.

Someone has told me to check the Oulu city website at www.ouka.fi. I get online and find the page filled with foreing gibberish, lots of it. When I’m just about to lose my temper I find a tiny Union Jack in the upper left hand corner of the page where it says “English”. I click on the flag.

After a quick browse of the page i find a link that says “Map Service”. Assuming a map is what I need to get to where my friend lives, I click on said link.

The link opens a map search page showing a map of what I assume is the greater Oulu area. In the top of the page there is a search bar with a type-in box for search criteria. Under the box there is a check-box option “search only from addresses” which leads me to believe I can type in my friend’s address. I do just that and click on the little play button thing right of the type-in box.

The page shows a zoomed-in map of the oulu city centre with a little dot-and-bubble thing where my friend supposedly lives. It seems the street name is actually spelled with one of those crazy scandinavian A’s with little dots above it, like so: “Mäkelininkatu”. I take out my trusty (and free) Look At Oulu map and mark down the spot (I could of course print out the map if only I had a printer). I think I’ll manage.

Thank you City of Oulu!

There, I’ve done it. The search process wasn’t too complicated, although there is room for improvement in the Oulu website. There were sufficient clues on the index page to guide one through such a process. The major drawback of the site, however, is the fact that it contains a lot of information, a feature which might discourage users who are inexperienced in searching the web for information. The rather dated ‘phone-book’ approach to web design (common in Finnish municipal/administrative websites) requires the user to scan the page throughoutly for clues in order to get ahead with his/her task. The map search engine itself is a functional and valuable tool.

And that’s that. See you all next year. Inspirational clip to follow:

Go Panda Go!