[aprssig] Part 3/3: Updating APRS Clients (Consumer Needs)

[Ev Tupis]

Basing features on user requirements and presenting those features in an intuitive User Interface is all-important to successful use of a product.

It is with deep respect to all APRS authors on my part that I will continue.

APRS clients suffer from the same first-paragraph shortcoming.  The major APRS clients were developed with pre-9/11 ideas about situational awareness in mind and have stagnated there.  The consumer has outgrown the APRS clients ability to deliver.

The APRS service doesn't meet their needs?  It is generally "a great
product that technologists trumpet but that consumers don't use" (from
the last sentence from Part 2).

This is sad because the Amateur/APRS community has so much to offer...*without* needing to be deployed "inside the yellow tape area".  For more on this, please read my DCC 2007 article (or ask me to send you the article in .PDF).

Is APRS willing to take a consumer-focused journey?  Once that is
answered, an entirely new world of possibility lies before it *and*
Amateur Radio.

The path forward, if so?  How about this: (1) identify the true consumer of APRS generated situational awareness data, (2) document their needs and goals, (3) create a "willing" (this can mean several things) development team and (4) build a client and reporting mechanism that would meet their needs.

We have the means to do this.  Do we have the willingness?

Kind regards,
Evhen Tupis, W2EV






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