Week 4: ArcGIS

This is my final map after going through all of the steps of Week 4's Lab:

     From my initial experiences with ArcGIS I can tell that it is an extremely complex tool with a lot of power. It seems like a user with expert proficiency would be able to organize a lot of data in a succinct way. However, the tool has a rather steep learning curve since it is so complex. For these reasons the applications of ArcGIS to spatial data and geoprocessing are limitless. 

     Because the tool is complex, beginning computer users will have trouble adjusting to the GUI. However, the documentation is very clear and helpful so most users can figure out how to use the features. Once figured out, there is a wide array of customizable objects, which are well organized within ArcGIS. The menu system used by ArcGIS makes usage fairly straighforward. 

     ArcGIS includes functionality which interprets scripting languages such as Python. Python is a popular programming language which is often used by graphical designers because of its simplicity, and many other fields of science for various applications. Because of python's widespread use, this additional functionality adds a great deal of power to ArcGIS. Also, researchers while find it easy to migrate their knowledge of Python to incorporate the ArcGIS API.

     The only problem I found with ArcGIS is the default color scheme which is very bland and boring like the old colors used in Microsoft Office 2003. The color schemes are entirely customizable but it takes a little bit of work to change the colors from their default values. Other aspects of the program such as shaping and aligning elements are very simple. Overall, ArcGIS is a well designed piece of software, and I have yet to run into any bugs or crashes.