Image Source: US Department of Defense
We just finished our 3rd Interface Sprint, where we do different challenges to see if we can test recent changes to the interface, find problems, or even to see if we can "break" something.
This doesn't always result in interface issues. For example, at our most recent sprint, we put forward the challenge of finding maps of countries in their native language. This was used to test the new language facet. But it's revealed that we don't seem to have maps of several countries in their native language. China in Chinese being very prominently absent. The Geoportal does have over 1700 Russia maps in Russian.
One issue found during this sprint has already been fixed! We had a task to explore the site for potential accessibility concerns. An automated checker found some of the colors used to have concerns with contrast. So the color scheme was updated to give better contrast!
So what do we do with all this info? Well, anything that is an outright interface problem gets reported as something needing fixed. Anything that's deemed something we want to do differently (like perhaps we want to move the order the facets are listed in), we send that forward for future development. Sometimes, this needs to be discussed more broadly if there are implications for other groups. And if we find something that's not really an interface thing (like Chinese China maps), we share that info to the appropriate other group(s).
So while we call it a sprint, I'm not sure we ever cross the finish line!
Danny Dotson
Interface Committee