Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
inverted selection or attribute selection. Finally, they mentioned the impor-
tance of data editing (such as cut/copy/paste operations) and the different
types of data joining (such as geospatial and attribute joins).
Meetings or presentations.
Most participants noticed that paper maps were
generally more useful than desktop GIS software during collaborative sce-
narios, in particular to point at an element or to perform annotations under
discussion. For instance, one participant said that “adding information on
paper maps by drawing is quite simple”. They also mentioned the naviga-
tion problems related to paper maps compared to GIS software. They, for
instance, explained that it is necessary to handle several paper maps with
different scales to “zoom”, such manipulations being time consuming. Par-
ticipants underlined that it was sometimes frustrating not to be able to in-
teract with the presenter system. As an example, several participants said
“it is difficult to precisely explain to the presenter where he must move the
view”. In small groups, it is common to see attendees switching places
with the presenter to interact with the system, and repeated moves tend to
be awkward and time consuming.
Co-located and interactive GIS
. All participants showed interest in this
project and insisted on the need for efficient and intuitive navigational
tools. Some of them mentioned gestural interaction on the iPhone: e.g., one
finger to move the map, two fingers for zooming and rotating, etc. They
also explained they would like to add contents to their basemap during the
meeting in order to avoid having to enter data afterward from written
notes. The capability to draw annotations would be appreciated in the case
of complex and time consuming analyses and users would also like to have
access to measurement tools (for angles, distances and areas).
These results confirm those obtained in (Hofstra et al. 2008), which reveal
the need of co-located GIS for providing the best of paper maps and desk-
top GIS software, that is to say interactivity and collaboration. This study
also highlights the need for numerous features, contrary to what is gener-
ally available in existing co-located prototypes and products. According to
these results, we will now present a novel interaction technique that
addresses the above-mentioned questions.
