Augmenting Quantum-GIS for collaborative and interactive Tabletops - Advances in Cartography and GIScience - page 298

The Ilight tabletop not only allows oral communications or social aware-
ness. It also allows for several users to interact without the burden of hav-
ing one person play the role of a moderator in charge of controlling the
system (a constraint that would be frustrating and time consuming for
teamwork). All participants can thus interact directly with the system by
touching the tabletop, a situation that is likely to be more efficient for sup-
porting users' ideas and exploiting their respective skills. Besides, direct
touch rather than mouse and keyboard interaction allows users to more
easily notice their partner's actions (Hofstra, et al. 2008).
Finally, this setup supports multi-touch interaction, this making it possible
for several users to interact simultaneously with the GIS. For instance,
several participants can annotate different elements on the same map (and
work on different parts of the map simultaneously) as shown in Figure 2 .
From the hardware point of view, our setup differs from Geodan Eagle by
its size [the Ilight screen (72x96cm) is larger than the Microsoft Surface
(55x69cm) and by its height (Surface is a coffee table while Ilight must be
used with participants standing up)]. This larger visualization space and
the fact that users do not have to bend down are likely to improve usabil-
ity. However, the main difference with Geodan Eagle is about interaction.
In the next section, we will propose a novel interaction technique to acti-
vate numerous GIS commands quickly and easily by performing multi-
touch gestures.
Figure 2 . Thoughts and annotations on implanting self-service electric car rental stations
in Paris.