General public

• Big learning curve: interface + data interpretation
• Hurdle for short attention spans

Existing dedicated audiences

• Highly-motivated users can take advantages of interactive affordances: freely exploring, drilling down to details, testing own hypothesis

  They just love giraffe, they love reading anything we do... and they would love seeing something like this.

• Participants struggled to find meaning in the GPS data
  © OCEARCH

  Many noted the animals' vast travel distances...
  ...but not much else.
  
  
• Contextual information was not well-integrated

  I guess what I got out of it, I think I could have also gotten out of a PowerPoint... I don't think that the actual geospatial component was integrated into the other component.

• Conservationists want users to empathize with the maps's animals:

  ...just allowing people to get to know these sharks as as individuals. You know, relating to them as animals that have a tough life, that struggle. We have a lot of white sharks that have been hit by boats.... People don’t tend to think of these animals that way a lot of times.

• But users felt more connected through the pictures and videos than the data

• Learning: about both the animals and research

  I learned a lot about how tracking animals works... I saw that you get a ping when they come to the surface and data is transferred!?

• Emotions: some claimed no emotional response, some happy to see the conservation work:

  It's nice to know with the WWF that they're doing a lot of work around the world... so that's a little bit of optimism.

• Actions: most didn't know what actions to take; some wanted to learn more