It's taken me awhile to get to it due to a variety of work and family obligations but we've finally reached what will be my final post on usability and the geoweb...for now at least.  I haven't covered all possible usability issues and scenarios, but have hit the high points and "big win" factors over the course of this series of posts.  To this point we've dealt with hiding complexity from our users, providing users with consistent, meaningful feedback within an application, and protecting users from themselves.  The lesson plan for this last installment will focus on application performance and its criticality in the overall user experience. Fact: One of the most critical components of a highly usable software system is that it be highly performant...in other words, fast.  In the realm of the GeoWeb, this means that applications should load fast initially, and that responses to user activity within the application should be as quick as possible.  We now live in a world of instant gratification when it comes to our news, our hobbies, our finances, and above all our interactions with computers. Users don't like to be kept waiting for 5 seconds every time they use your app to request information, input data, or perform other common processing tasks.  Gone are the days when watching the blue bar move in a web app, or watching the cursor spin on a wireless app were the status quo.  And frankly with the amount that we, as consultants, get paid to build custom software, the user shouldn't have to wait. Headlong into the breach then for our fourth and final lesson...

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