Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3:
The Quantum GIS (left) and QGIS-MT (right) main windows
3- User needs and command selection
QGIS provides a large number of features and all of them are obviously
not useful when interacting on a tabletop. For instance, the PC is better
suited for writing long documents because of its keyboard. But some tasks
such as layer editing are likely to be really useful in collaborative scenar-
ios. We thus conducted an interview to learn which features would be
especially valuable when working collaboratively on a tabletop.
3.1 Interview
Ten GIS users, 2 being QGIS users, participated in a face-to-face interview
about their use of GIS. Nine of them came from spatial data analysis or
production. During the first part of the interview, they were asked about
features they often use on their desktop GIS software. During the second
part, they were asked about their experience with GIS or large paper maps
during typical collaborative scenarios such as meetings or presentations.
We also asked them to compare GIS and large paper maps, to describe
their respective advantages and drawbacks, and to explain which features
or behaviors would be helpful for them. Finally, we presented our interac-
tive co-located setup and discussed the usefulness of this environment and
how it could be improved. We now report the main results.
Desktop GIS software.
All participants first mentioned the need for efficient
navigational features (pan, zoom, rotate). They also said they frequently
used different kinds of selection tools such as rectangular selection,
