Abstract
Abstract. Multi-touch interaction has become popular in recent years and impressive advances in technology have been demonstrated, with the presentation of digital maps as a common presentation scenario. However, most existing systems are really technology demonstrators and have not been designed with real applications in mind. A critical factor in the management of disaster situations is the access to current and reliable data. New sensors and data acquisition platforms (e.g. satellites, UAVs, mobile sensor networks) have improved the supply of spatial data tremendously. However, in many cases this data is not well integrated into current crisis management systems and the capabilities to analyze and use it lag behind sensor capabilities. Therefore, it is essential to develop techniques that allow the effective organization, use and management of heterogeneous data from a wide variety of data sources. Standard user interfaces are not well suited to provide this information to crisis managers. Especially in dynamic situations conventional cartographic displays and mouse based interaction techniques fail to address the need to review a situation rapidly and act on it as a team. The development of novel interaction techniques like multi-touch and tangible interaction in combination with large displays provides a promising base technology to provide crisis managers with an adequate overview of the situation and to share relevant information with other stakeholders in a collaborative setting. However, design expertise on the use of such techniques in interfaces for real-world applications is still very sparse. In this paper we report on interdisciplinary research with a user and application centric focus to establish real-world requirements, to design new multi-modal mapping interfaces, and to validate them in disaster management applications. Initial results show that tangible and pen-based interaction are well suited to provide an intuitive and visible way to control who is changing data in a multi-user command and control interface.
Highlights
To develop the essential design expertise with new multi-modal interaction and presentation techniques we have chosen a real application in which spatial data is shared and interacted upon by a group of people.1.1 Application The selected application is a disaster management application that is studied in close collaboration with the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (Technisches Hilfswerk/THW) (Fig.1)
Because current base technologies for such interfaces are still in an early stage of development, and the limitations of currently available techniques can negatively impact the usability of the final application, the development of the required base technologies for multimodal interaction and visualization was considered as an integral part of the design and development process
As discussed previously the multi-modal interaction techniques are key enablers of these process improvements, because conventional user interface techniques fail to address many of the basic conditions of group interaction and situation awareness, the computerized processes described above can only be realized because the new interaction techniques enable to design a system that fits the central requirements
Summary
To develop the essential design expertise with new multi-modal interaction and presentation techniques we have chosen a real application in which spatial data is shared and interacted upon by a group of people. Starting from user requirements we have applied a user centred design approach to develop new user interfaces that maximise the benefits of technologies like large-scale multi-touch displays. 1.2 User centred approach A user centred approach is essential to develop new user interfaces that realize the benefits of technologies like largescale multi-touch displays in real-world applications. In our user centred design process, we use close collaboration with end users to establish requirements, to examine new concepts in data analysis and presentation and to validate the newly developed user interfaces. To establish end-user requirements recurring interviews and workshops were conducted with disaster managers and technicians from THW and training exercises observed. These revealed a number of areas for potential improvements that could be addressed through multi-touch table interfaces. With digital map repositories and the proliferation of new sensors the problem of disaster managers increasingly changes from one where information is missing to one where the required information is too difficult to access and analyse
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