An Interactive Web-Based Visualization Tool: Design and Development Cycles

Current advancements in web technologies are enabling to develop new features of interactive systems that rely on cloud infrastructure and services. In this paper, we present our efforts related to the development of three prototypes of a web-based visualization tool that use Google Cloud Services to process and visualize geo-temporal data. The domain in which these efforts are taking place is in the field of environmental science. The need of web-based visualization tools in this area indicates the importance of allowing users in an interactive manner to explore, analyze and reflect on different representations of environmental data. We discuss the development of these prototypes and their features, as well as the different iterations that were carried out during these processes. The outcomes of the design and development processes point out that the users´ feedback generated during the prototyping cycles provided valuable insights in order to further enhance the web-based visualization tool. Thus, our study emphasizes the need of finding a balance between design and development in order to consider how the rapid evolution of web technologies should be taken into account during the design and planning of different cycles of web prototyping.