Collaborative map-exploration around large table-top displays: Designing a collaboration interface for the Rapid Analytics Interactive Scenario Explorer toolkit
Mathis Gales · 2018
Sense-making of spatial data on an urban level and large-scale decisions on new infrastructure projects need teamwork from experts with varied backgrounds. Technology can facilitate this collaboration process and magnify the effect of collective intelligence. Therefore, this work explores new useful collaboration interactions and visualizations for map-exploration software with a strong focus on usability. Additionally, for same-time and same-place group work, interactive table-top displays serve as a natural platform. Thus, the second aim of this project is to develop a user-friendly concept for integrating table-top displays with collaborative map-exploration. To achieve these goals, we continuously adapted the user-interface of the map-exploration software RAISE. We adopted a user-centred design approach and a simple iterative interaction design lifecycle model. Alternating between quick prototyping and user-testing phases, new design concepts were assessed and consequently improved or rejected. The necessary data was gathered through continuous dialogue with users and experts, a participatory design workshop, and a final observational study. Adopting a cross-device concept, our final prototype supports sharing information between a user’s personal device and table-top display(s). We found that this allows for a comfortable and practical separation between private and shared workspaces. The tool empowers users to share the current camera-position, data queries, and active layers between devices and with other users. We generalized further findings into a set of recommendations for designing user-friendly tools for collaborative map-exploration. The set includes recommendations regarding the sharing behaviour, the user-interface design, and the idea of playfulness in collaboration.